No Data Yet On How Long Vaccinated Person Will Be COVID Free - CDC Director Redfield

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd December, 2020) There is no data yet on how long a person who gets a COVID-19 vaccination will remain immune from the virus, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said Tuesday.

"We just don't know how long," Redfield told a live-streamed event, responding to a question on how long a COVID-19 vaccine would work for for someone who gets it. "We don't know if it's going to be six months. We don't know if it's going to be for a year. But I think it really is a gift to have these vaccines (and) to see 95 percent efficacy for the first two."

Redfield was commenting on the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, both of which were reported to be 95 percent effective in clinical trials. The two drug makers have applied for emergency use authorization from the US food and Drug Administration to fast track their doses to the market to immunize people as soon as possible as the pandemic rages anew in the United States.

US healthcare workers and nursing home residents will get the first of the COVID-19 vaccines once the doses are rolled out in the coming weeks, CDC officials told a briefing on Tuesday.

CDC slides released at the briefing showed the agency expecting around 40 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to be available by the end of December, with shipments of 5 million to 10 million doses being made per week once a vaccine is authorized by regulators.

Moncef Slaoui, an adviser to the Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed" plan on COVID-19 vaccines, also said Tuesday that some 60 million to 70 million doses could be available per month beginning in January, after expected FDA approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Additionally, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday the state will receive by December 15 its first COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer Inc that would be enough to immunize 170,000 people.

Redfield reiterated that he expected that every American who wanted a COVID-19 vaccine would be able to get one by the second or third quarter of 2021. "I've said that publicly and it has been criticized by others, but I think those estimates are probably going to be right on target."

More than 13.7 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus since January and more than 271,000 have died of related complications, data tracked by the Johns Hopkins University showed. In recent weeks, daily hospitalization of those infected have reached more than 100,000.