U.S. Vaccinations Ramp Up as Second COVID-19 Shot Nears

By MATTHEW PERRONE AP Health Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds more U.S. hospitals are set to begin vaccinating their workers Tuesday as federal regulators issued a positive review of a second COVID-19 vaccine shot needed to boost the nation’s largest vaccination campaign. The Food and Drug Administration said in documents posted online that its initial review confirmed the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, bringing the shot to the cusp of U.S. authorization. A panel of outside experts will offer their recommendation Thursday, with a final FDA decision expected soon thereafter. The positive news comes as hospitals across the U.S. begin ramping up vaccinations with the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech’s, which the FDA cleared last week. Packed in dry ice to stay at ultra-frozen temperatures, shipments of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are set to arrive at 400 additional hospitals and other distribution sites, one day after the nation’s death toll surpassed a staggering 300,000. The first 3 million shots are being strictly rationed to front-line health workers and elder-care patients, with hundreds of millions more shots needed over the coming months to protect most Americans. A second vaccine can’t come soon enough as the country’s daily death count continues to top 2,400 amid over 210,000 new daily cases, based on weekly averages of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The ...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: AP News Coronavirus Hospital Medicine Source Type: news