Pfizer and BioNTech will provide the US with an additional 100m doses of coronavirus vaccine by mid-summer under a new $2bn deal with the American government.
This addition means that Pfizer and BioNTech will deliver a total of 200m doses to the US and enable some 100 million people to be inoculated against the deadly virus.
The pharmaceutical companies announced their plan on Wednesday morning in a press release. They plan to deliver all these doses by mid-summer, with a minimum of 70m delivered by 30 June and the remainder “no later than” 31 July. Under this agreement, the US will also have the option to obtain another 400m doses.
There have been 18,238,233 Covid-19 cases in the US, with 322,849 recorded deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US will see its deadliest year in history largely due to Covid-19. Experts believe that overall US life expectancy could drop by as much as three years.
“Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio,” said Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services. “This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine was the first to receive emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. The first shipments were sent to states last week.
The FDA has also granted emergency use authorization to Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. While both vaccines require two doses, Moderna does not have to be stored in ultra-cold freezers.
News of these additional doses came several weeks after reports revealed that the Trump Administration had passed on the opportunity to purchase millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. The administration’s contract with Pfizer was for 100m doses, and provided an opportunity to buy up to 500m additional doses.
Trump’s administration decided not to secure an additional 100m doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for the second quarter of 2021, however.
While more vaccines are expected to come on line, US officials are also contending with apparent vaccine hesitancy. New data indicated that approximately 50% of Americans would take the vaccine, but 25%of adults said they weren’t certain and another 25% said they would not.
Experts have maintained that “herd immunity” – when the overall population has mostly become immune because a significant proportion is – will be achieved when 60% to 70% acquire some level of immunity.
The news comes as the devastating current surge has wreaked havoc across the US and especially in California, where officials are warning that the state’s healthcare system may fracture in weeks if people ignore holiday social distancing.
Top executives from the state’s largest hospital systems Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, which together cover 15 million Californians, said on Tuesday that increasingly exhausted staff, many pressed into service outside their normal duties, are now attending to Covid-19 patients in hallways and conference rooms.
The chief executive of the Martin Luther King community hospital in Los Angeles, Dr Elaine Batchlor, separately said patients there have spilled over into the gift shop and five tents outside the emergency department.
“We don’t have space for anybody. We’ve been holding patients for days because we can’t get them transferred, can’t get beds for them,” said Dr Alexis Lenz, an emergency room physician at El Centro regional medical center in Imperial county, in the south-east corner of the state.
California is closing in on 2m confirmed cases of Covid-19. The state on Tuesday reported nearly 32,700 newly confirmed cases. Another 653 patients were admitted to hospitals, one of the biggest one-day hospitalization jumps for a total approaching 18,000.
State data models have predicted the hospitalizations could top 100,000 in a month if current rates continue.
More worrying than lack of beds is a lack of personnel. The pool of available travel nurses is drying up as demand for them jumped 44% over the last month, with California, Texas, Florida, New York and Minnesota requesting the most extra staff, according to San Diego-based health care staffing firm Aya Healthcare.
“We’re now in a situation where we have surges all across the country, so nobody has many nurses to spare,” said Dr Janet Coffman, a professor of public policy at the University of California in San Francisco.
California is contacting places like Australia and Taiwan to fill the need for 3,000 temporary medical workers, particularly nurses trained in critical care.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
