After being rolled out in the UK, the United States geared up for its largest ever immunisation campaign. With a quick jab of Pfizer vaccine to a nurse’s left deltoid, the USA entered a new phase in its fight against the novel coronavirus.
The injection to Sandra Lindsay’s arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Centre on Monday made her the first person from US to receive the COVID-19 vaccine outside a clinical trial.
On Friday, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine received emergency-use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The roll-out comes as the infection continues to hit the country. Fatalities have been on surge since November and the number of people in hospital with the infection has also continued to grow progressively, with more than 1,09,000 currently admitted, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine - a collaboration between a US pharmaceutical giant and a German biotechnology company - offers up to 95 per cent protection and is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be accepted by US regulators.
Meanwhile, the US has crossed the grim milestone of 3,00,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to the Centre for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. With the national case count over 16.3 million, the death toll across the US rose to 3,00,267 as of Monday, according to the CSSE data, Xinhua news agency reported.
