WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (AFP): The United States hopes to begin a sweeping program of Covid vaccinations in early December, the head of the government coronavirus vaccine effort said Sunday.
"Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours of approval" by the US Food and Drug Administration, Moncef Slaoui told CNN.
"So I expect maybe on Day Two of the approval, on the 11th or the 12th of December."
FDA vaccine advisors reportedly will meet December 8 to 10 to discuss approving vaccines which Pfizer and Moderna say are at least 95 percent effective.
AP adds: The surging coronavirus is taking an increasingly dire toll across the U.S. just as a vaccine appears close at hand, with the country now averaging over 1,300 COVID-19 deaths per day - the highest level since the calamitous spring in and around New York City.
The overall U.S. death toll has reached about 254,000, by far the most in the world. Confirmed infections have eclipsed more than 11.8 million, after the biggest one-day gain on record Thursday - almost 188,000. And the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 hit another all-time high at more than 80,000.
With health experts deeply afraid Thanksgiving travel and holiday gatherings next week will fuel the spread of the virus, many states and cities are imposing near-lockdowns or other restrictions. California ordered a 10 p.m.-to 5-a.m. curfew starting Saturday, covering 94% of the state's 40 million residents.
The Texas border county of El Paso, where more than 300 people have died from COVID-19 since October, is advertising jobs for morgue workers capable of lifting bodies weighing 175 pounds (79 kilograms) or more. Officials are offering more than $27 an hour for work described as not only physically arduous but "emotionally taxing as well."
The county had already begun paying jail inmates $2 an hour to help move corpses and has ordered at least 10 refrigerated trucks as morgues run out of room.
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