The first doses of an FDA-authorized Covid-19 vaccine have been delivered to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, less than a year after the disease was first spotted in the US, officials said Monday.
Operation Warp Speed, a public-private effort, developed the Pfizer vaccine in less than a year, an astonishing feat since most vaccines take years to develop. Delivery was speedy, too -- shipping companies FedEx and UPS started transport on Sunday and completed all first-day vaccine deliveries. US Surgeon General Jerome Adams called the rollout of the vaccine "tremendous."
"This is just tremendous and I'm smiling bigger than I've smiled in a long time because it has been a hard year for so many people out there, including me personally," Adams told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "Today we really did get a shot of hope."
The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine were injected Monday into health care workers -- those at the front lines of the pandemic. But it will be several months before most Americans can get a Covid-19 vaccine.
In the meantime, thousands of Americans are dying from the virus every day. On Monday afternoon, the national death toll from coronavirus-related reasons surpassed 300,000, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US also recorded 110,549 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Monday, setting a new record high since the pandemic began, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
And the rates of new infections and deaths are accelerating at unprecedented rates, meaning Americans must hunker down this winter before rolling up their sleeves. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that Americans should not think the arrival of a vaccine means the end of the pandemic.