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- The US plans to ship 6 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine once it is authorized for emergency use, the head of logistics for the government’s vaccine initiative said during a press briefing Monday.
- This would be double the US’s initial shipment of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine.
- “The difference in quantities was about what was available when we were doing planning for initial delivery,” Gen. Gustave Perna of the vaccine initiative, Operation Warp Speed, said.
- The US government has ordered 200 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. If the vaccine is authorized, Moderna plans to deliver 20 million doses this year.
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The US plans to ship 6 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine as soon as the Food and Drug Administration authorizes it for emergency use, officials said Monday – more than double the nation’s initial shipment of Pfizer and BioNTech’s shot.
Emergency authorization by the FDA is “likely” to come by Friday, the head of the White House’s vaccine effort known as Operation Warp Speed said Sunday. A panel of FDA experts is scheduled to review the vaccine Thursday.
Gen. Gustave Perna, the head of logistics for Operation Warp Speed, said during a press briefing Monday that the US would ship “just a little bit short of 6 million doses out to the American people” following authorization.
“Our goal would be for the Moderna product to be available this time next week across the United States,” Perna said Monday.
Six million doses would be more than double the US’s initial shipment of 2.9 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine.
"The difference in quantities was about what was available when we were doing planning for initial delivery," Perna said.
"As early as November 15, I snapped the chalk line on what was available to Pfizer so states could do planning ... We wanted them to have as much time to do planning and realize where they wanted it to go first.
"The key is we catch up in our following cadence and allocations," he added.
Moderna's initial doses are to be packaged and distributed to 3,285 sites across the US - significantly more than for the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.
While Pfizer is shipping doses directly from its warehouses via FedEx and UPS because of its ultracold chain facilities, Moderna is using the medical-supply company McKesson, which in turn will work alongside FedEx and UPS for the final stages of delivery, Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, said at the briefing.
The US is also setting aside additional doses of Moderna's vaccine for patients to get their second dose, Perna said. Moderna's vaccine consists of two doses, four weeks apart.
Alongside this, the government will keep further doses as a reserve, as it did with 500,000 doses from Pfizer, Perna added, though he didn't say how many of Moderna's would be set aside.
Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine was the first COVID-19 vaccine to be authorized for emergency use in the US. A critical-care nurse in New York on Monday became the first American to receive the shot outside clinical trials.
The US government has ordered 200 million doses of Moderna's vaccine, including a second order of 100 million announced Friday.
If the vaccine is authorized, Moderna plans to deliver 20 million doses by the end of the month and then the rest over the first six months of 2021. The US also has the option to purchase a further 300 million doses.
About 100 million Americans, or roughly a third of the population, could be fully vaccinated by the end of March, officials told the press briefing Monday. This is slightly later than previous estimates: Slaoui said on December 2 that 100 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of February.