Covid-19: US seeks to change course of contagion

He introduced his health team, as he is all set to assume office on January 20 and urged Americans to “mask up for 100 days”.

Joe Biden, the President-elect of the United States of America, has set a goal of 100 million novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccinations in his first 100 days in office.

He said his first months in office would not end the pandemic and shared few details on a rollout plan, as he sought to change the course of the contagion.

He introduced his health team, as he is all set to assume office on January 20 and urged Americans to “mask up for 100 days”.

On Tuesday, a report paved the way for a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be approved and rolled out for Americans.

The US has recorded over 15 million Covid-19 cases and 285,000 deaths due to the viral outbreak, according to Johns Hopkins University research.

Both the figures are a global record.

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom became the first Western nation to launch a mass vaccination programme against Covid-19.

The UK has emerged as a test case for the rest of the world.

The island nation plans to vaccinate millions of people at record speed.

Russia has started giving shots of its indigenous Sputnik V vaccine to health workers and others but, like China’s Sinovac, it hasn’t undergone full clinical trials.

Shipments of Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine Coronavac have arrived in Indonesia ahead of a mass vaccination campaign, with another 1.8m doses due to arrive by January.

But the vaccine is yet to finish its late-stage trials, which begs the question: what exactly do we know about this Chinese vaccine?

Pfizer’s plant in Puurs, Belgium, is storing the millions of doses of the fragile vaccine, which was produced months ago, at around -70 degrees Celsius (C), making transportation a major challenge.

Moderna rival vaccine candidate must be shipped and stored at -20 degrees C, while AstraZeneca candidate doesn’t require subzero temperatures.

Moderna’s vaccine is under evaluation by the USA’s Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

The air industry is bracing for transporting billions of doses at a time when the number of flights worldwide has been severely curtailed by a lack of passengers.

Some carriers have converted passenger planes into ship vaccines by removing seats.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group, said a single dose for each of the world’s 7.8 billion people would fill 8,000 Boeing 747 cargo aircraft.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two jabs per person. Some logistics companies said that figure appears high, and that it is too early to say how much strain will be placed on logistics networks.