HHS Secretary Azar: Millions Of Covid-19 Vaccines Are Being Manufactured Each Week – Forbes

HHS Secretary Alex Azar speaks at the 2020 Forbes virtual Healthcare Summit

At the 2020 Forbes Healthcare Summit, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said that the government is facilitating the production of a massive number of doses of several Covid-19 vaccines each week in anticipation of FDA emergency authorization. Were producing more vaccines literally every single week, he told moderator Avik Roy, President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and Policy Editor at Forbes.

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On Tuesday, an advisory board for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that frontline healthcare workers and residents and staff in nursing homes should be the first populations to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. While distribution will ultimately be left up to the states to decide, it is expected that state governments will follow these recommendations to prioritize these hard-hit populations. Over 100,000 residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died due to Covid-19, which often presents more severe symptoms in the elderly.

Azar says that by mid-December, the government could already have 6 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTechs mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, enough for about 3 million people. If last months request for emergency use authorization is approved, he says that theoretically the residents of all nursing homes in the country could receive vaccinations within one week of approval. If Modernas mRNA vaccine is also approved, that would mean even more doses.

And if youre not in a nursing home facility or working directly with Covid-19 patients, the vaccines could still come sooner than predicted. Progressively more and more populations, throughout the country will get vaccinated, Azar says. Vaccinations will ramp up in the months of January, February and March. Millions of new doses of the vaccine will continue to be produced each week. By the spring of next year, he says, we will have enough vaccines for every American who wants it.

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HHS Secretary Azar: Millions Of Covid-19 Vaccines Are Being Manufactured Each Week - Forbes