First U.S. COVID shots coming Monday: Army General

The first shots in a massive U.S. COVID-19 vaccine campaign will be administered as early as Monday, with Pfizer Inc and partners aiming to start shipments across the hard-hit country on Sunday, an Army general organizing the rollout said.

Colette Luke has more.

(U.S. Army General Gustave Perna saying:) "Make no mistake, distribution has begun." The first U.S. shots of Pfizer’s newly authorized COVID-19 vaccine will be administered as early as Monday morning, with shipments scheduled to go out Sunday, according to the U.S. general organizing the rollout.

(U.S. Army General Gustave Perna saying:) "We expect 145 sites, across all the states, to receive vaccine on Monday…” U.S. Army General Gustave Perna on Saturday during a press call said that the remainder of locations to receive the first batch of doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and partner BioNTech will receive them on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Right now, boxes are being packed and loaded with vaccine with emphasis on quality control.

Within the next twenty four hours, they will begin moving vaccine from the Pfizer manufacturing facility to the UPS and FedEx hubs, and then it will go out to the six hundred and thirty six locations nationwide... I am absolutely 100 percent confident that we are going to distribute safely this precious commodity, this vaccine needed to defeat the enemy, COVID." The United States on Friday evening granted an emergency use authorization for the vaccine for people aged 16 and older.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn at a press conference on Saturday sought to reassure Americans that the vaccine’s record fast pace of development was warranted and regulators had not sacrificed safety.

(FDA chief Stephen Hahn saying:) "Science and data guided the FDA’s decision.

We worked quickly based on the urgency of this pandemic, not because of any other external pressure/ The representation in the press that I was threatened to be fired if we didn’t get it done by a certain date is inaccurate.” (Dr. Peter Marks saying:) “We actually considered the potential allergic reaction pretty carefully here." Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the FDA division that authorized the vaccine, said at the same press conference that most Americans with allergies should be safe to receive the vaccine.

Concerns have arisen in recent days after some of the first Britons to take the vaccine became ill.

Britain, Canada and three other countries have already authorized the vaccine.

This is the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the United States, where the pandemic has killed more than 295,000 people and the country hit a record 16 million COVID-19 cases on Saturday.