Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration could green-light Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine “in a matter of days.”
Azar said on CNN’s “New Day” that the vaccine, after approval, would be shipped to “wherever the governors have told us they want it to go.”
“The governors will decide how to prioritize and get that out there,” he said.
Azar emphasized health care workers and nursing home residents will be the first vaccinated. He said the vaccines will be available to the general public close to February or March.
“Twenty million people should get vaccinated in just the next several weeks and then we’ll just keep rolling out vaccines through January, February, March as they come off the production lines,” he said.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets Thursday to consider Pfizer’s application for emergency-use authorization of its coronavirus vaccine.
As of Wednesday, the U.S. has roughly 15.2 million coronavirus cases and 287,000 related deaths — both tops globally — according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
