US: The United States and Europe on Tuesday fleshed out plans to administer COVID-19 vaccines as soon as they gain approval, with a US panel recommending that health care workers and nursing home residents be given top priority.
Hopes are high that shots could be ready for use before the end of the year, with two frontrunner vaccines -- by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer -- already seeking emergency use approval on both sides of the Atlantic.
Companies have been racing to find a treatment for the coronavirus, which has killed almost 1.5 million people and infected more than 63 million since it emerged in China in December of last year.
In the United States, an advisory panel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proposed that health care workers and nursing home residents -- 24 million people in total -- be the first in line for Covid jabs.
Those two groups have accounted for about 40 percent of deaths in the US thus far.
But there won't be one set of rules for the entire nation of 330 million -- the federal government can only make recommendations to states, which ultimately decide for themselves.
- AFP
