Good news! US plans to begin COVID-19 vaccination by this date - Details here

Pfizer has already submitted an applicatoon to the US FDA for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

Moncef Slaoui, the head of the US government's effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, has expressed hope that the first American would receive a vaccine by the second week of December.

"Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I would expect maybe on day two after approval, on the 11th or on the 12th of December, hopefully, the first people will be immunized across the United States, across all states, in all the areas where the State Departments of Health will have told us where to deliver the vaccine," Slaoui told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" Sunday.

It is to be noted that on Friday (November 20) an application was submitted by American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. It is learnt that an FDA vaccine advisory committee will meet on December 10 to take a decision in this regard.

Slaoui said that with the level of efficacy shown by both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, "70% or so of the population being immunized would allow for true herd immunity to take place, that is likely to happen somewhere in the month of May, or something like that based on our plans."

It may be recalled that Pfizer had reported 95 per cent efficacy of its vaccine and had said the emergency use of its vaccine could start the process early.

According to Slaoui, 20 million people across the US could be vaccinated in December and around 30 million people would be vacinated per month after that.

Meanwhile, the developer of Sputnik V have claimed that the price of the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V will be lower than the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Moderna.

"Translating pharma lingo: the announced price of Pfizer of USD 19.50 (Rs 1446) and Moderna of USD 25-USD 37 (Rs 1854.07-2744.02) per dose actually means their price of USD 39 (Rs 2892.34) and USD 50-USD 74 (Rs 3708.13-5488.04) per person. Two doses are required per person for the Pfizer, Sputnik V and Moderna vaccines. The price of Sputnik V will be much lower," the official account said.