Once a vaccine is approved, every American won’t be able to get it at once. That sets up the unenviable task of deciding, amid a deadly pandemic, who is most vulnerable to the disease and who is most essential to inoculate quickly.
“People are a little uneasy about the government calling the shots here,” NIH’s Dr. Collins told a Senate panel [last] month.
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Once a vaccine is available, it could still take six months to a year to vaccinate enough of the population to slow the spread. “That’s if you’re lucky,” Vijay Samant, a vaccine expert who oversaw the production of three successful vaccines when he worked at Merck. said.
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Once a vaccine is authorized, the goal is to roll it out immediately. By next year, the administration hopes to have roughly 300 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine available. Whichever vaccine becomes available will likely require an initial dose followed by a second booster shot, vaccine experts and suppliers said.
Once a vaccine is ready, it is still a tall order to get from the lab and into the arms of Americans. The US government is already shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for supplies like glass vials and syringes.
