UPS and Federal Express (FedEx) trucks were sent out on a joint mission. The two delivery services helped ship out the covid-19 vaccines across the country, with shipments arriving at their destinations by 10:30 am today.
According to UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler, UPS and FedEx are working together to ship the vaccines. The trailers were packed overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning, NPR reported.
The FDA gave emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine on Nov. 11 for people 16 and older, and Moderna’s vaccine is expected to be authorized following a review scheduled for Nov. 17 by the agency’s independent advisers, The Washington Post reported.
There are other companies working on vaccines as well. Recently, the National Institute of Health suspended the trial of a vaccine made by Chinese drug giant Sinopharm after a volunteer had difficulty moving their arms.
There has been some debate over who should receive the vaccine first. Many Black leaders want Black people to be selected first as the Black death rate from the virus was disproportionately high.
Here are five things Black America needs to know about the shipping out of the covid vaccine today.
According to bipartisan research group Covid Collaborative, only 14 percent of Black people trust the vaccine’s safety. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s study revealed similar results — just 17 percent of Black people are willing to get the shots.
While the Black community has a higher risk of contracting and dying from covid-19, the medical mistrust is more than understandable. The medical community had not had a very honest history with Black people.
Take the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted ongoing syphilis trials on 600 Black men without revealing all the facts to the participants. Another case is that centered around Henrietta Lacks, who died from cervical cancer in 1951. But researchers used her cells for medical discoveries long after her death and without her consent or family knowledge, The New York Times reported.
While the vaccine will help change the course of the virus across the county, many states are complaining about limited financial aid from the federal government to help in the drug’s distribution. Right now, the states must cover most of the cost of distributing the vaccine to its residents. State officials “criticized the federal government for a lack of transparency and help, warning that both could hamper efforts to quickly vaccinate the most vulnerable populations, including health-care workers and the elderly,” The Washington Post reported.
Million of doses of the vaccine were shipped out today, nationwide. In all, nearly 3 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are being distributed to stop the spread of the virus, which has so far killed more than 298,000 Americans.
And, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar the plan is to have 20 million people vaccinated by the end of December, up to 50 million by the end of January and 100 million by the end of February, The Washington Post reported.
A second vaccine, developed by Moderna, is expected to soon receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
“We’ll be getting more and more Pfizer product, and we’ve got 12.5 million Moderna product, assuming that we get approval at the end of this week on Moderna, that we’ll ship out very soon thereafter,” Azar said during an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
Although it was initially planned that some White House staff members would be among the first wave of people in the United States to receive coronavirus vaccinations, Trump announced yesterday that he has rejected that plan.
Trump said Sunday that he was reversing an administration directive to vaccinate top government officials against covid-19, while public distribution of the shot is limited to front-line health workers and people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, The Associated Press reported.
“People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary,” Trump said in a tweet. “I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield gave the final decision to recommend Pfizer’s vaccine for those 16 and older.
But despite the rapid rollout of the Pfizer vaccine, it will be months before immunizations have any effect on the pandemic in the U.S., The Washington Post reported.
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According to officials, about 70 to 80 percent will need to get the vaccine before herd immunity is achieved.
Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser to the White House’s effort to develop a vaccine, said officials hope to “reach that point between the month of May and the month of June.”
“All in all, we hope to have immunized 100 million people, which would be the long-term care facility people, the elderly people with comorbidities, the first-line workers, the health-care workers,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s about 120 million people — we would have immunized 100 million people by the first quarter of 2021 with two doses of vaccines.”
