Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized Moderna’s vaccine, advisers to the CDC must now vote to recommend it, and the CDC must accept that recommendation before vaccinations can begin. The advisory group is scheduled to meet Saturday morning.
The second green light comes as hundreds of Americans across the country have already received their first dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, which was authorized by the FDA last week.
“This is the beginning of the end,” Adams told CNN Friday night. “Make no mistake about it, it’s going to be a hard couple of weeks. We’ve still got work to do to get over this surge, but I want people to be encouraged.”
He said he chose to get the vaccine on TV because he wanted the American public to “understand I’ve looked at the data, I’ve worked with the companies and I felt safe getting the vaccine.”
“Really, this is a life and death message for Black people about the coronavirus,” Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice said.
A raging pandemic that’s far from over
Despite the promising news, it’s not quite the end. In many parts of the US, Covid-19 is still raging across communities.
- More than 18,000 Americans died of Covid-19 in the past week. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects another more than 237,000 Americans will die of Covid-19 over the next three months.
- For the 13th day in a row, the country beat its own hospitalization record. There are now more than 114,700 Covid-19 patients across the US, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
- For the past week, the US reported an average of more than 219,000 new Covid-19 infections every day. On Friday, the country broke a record, reporting more than 249,700 new infections.
- Three Alaska health care workers had allergic reactions after receiving a dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine this week. The FDA has said there is a “remote chance” the vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction. Because so many people are taking the vaccine at once, the public may perceive these severe reactions as being far more common than they actually are.
Johns Hopkins launches vaccine…
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