9 & 10 News
December 18, 2020
WASHINGTON Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says shipments of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine will begin this weekend if the FDA grants emergency use authorization as expected on Friday.
“Trucks will roll, planes will fly this weekend, 5.9 million doses of Moderna vaccine allocated for next week,” Azar told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday.
Azar said the Moderna vaccine is “shockingly effective” and he expected to get vaccinated next week, if the White House physician cleared him to do so. Azar’s wife has tested positive for COVID-19 and he is quarantining at the moment.
Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams are getting vaccinated on live TV Friday morning.
Article content
Pfizer Inc. pushed back on claims it is experiencing problems producing its Covid-19 vaccine, as the company and the federal government continued to try to reach a deal that would eventually double the number of doses available for the U.S.’s vast immunization effort.
Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said in an interview on Thursday that the U.S. is close to a deal for another 100 million doses of the vaccine Pfizer developed in partnership with BioNTech SE. Through the agreement, Pfizer would deliver the additional supply in the second quarter of 2021, Slaoui said.
Moderna s vaccine does not require specialized ultra-cold freezers or vast quantities of dry ice.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will rapidly work towards granting emergency approval of Moderna Inc s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on Thursday.
A panel of outside advisers to the FDA overwhelmingly endorsed the emergency use of Moderna s coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, virtually assuring a second option for protecting against COVID-19 for a pandemic ravaged nation.
The committee voted 20-0 with one abstention that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks in people aged 18 and older.
A week ago, the same panel backed a vaccine from Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE, leading to an FDA emergency use authorization (EUA) a day later.
Confusion arises as states learn they re receiving fewer doses of Pfizer s COVID-19 vaccine than expected By Max Bayer FDA panel recommends Moderna vaccine
More than 10 states have been told that the number of doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine they were expecting to receive next week has been cut, with little information as to why. State officials in Wyoming, Minnesota, Washington, California, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Connecticut and Kentucky have said they ve been notified of reductions.
While some states didn t specify the size of the reduction, officials in Washington and Oregon said their states will receive 40% fewer doses than what was expected. California is receiving 160,000 fewer doses than expected. For Michigan, it s nearly 25,000.
»
Pfizer said it had millions of doses of vaccine sitting in a warehouse because the federal government hadn t told it where to send them
Pfizer said it had millions of doses of vaccine sitting in a warehouse because the federal government hadn t told it where to send them
Ashley CollmanDec 18, 2020, 20:00 IST
Boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan on December 13, 2020.Morry Gash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Pfizer released a statement Thursday to deny claims it was having issues producing its COVID-19 vaccine.
It came after officials in more than a dozen states complained that they were receiving fewer doses than promised and the US secretary of health and human services mentioned manufacturing challenges.