The first shots were given in the American mass vaccination campaign on Monday, opening a new chapter in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more people in the United States — over 300,000 — than in any other country and has taken a particularly devastating toll on people of color.
While the first dose of the vaccine was administered in New York, people across the nation began receiving it on Monday as well.
There was plenty of applause and some tears as news cameras captured the mundane rituals of an injection, underscoring the pent-up hope that this was the first step in getting past the pandemic.
A majority of the first injections given on Monday are expected to go to high-risk health care workers.
The vaccinations started after the F.D.A.’s emergency authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday night.
The vaccine is given as two injections, 21 days apart, with the second dose being a booster. Immunity begins to kick in after the first dose but reaches its full effect seven days after the second dose.
On Sunday, trucks and cargo planes packed with the first of nearly three million doses of coronavirus vaccine had fanned out across the country, as hospitals in all 50 states rushed to set up injection sites and their anxious workers tracked each shipment hour by hour.
But the joy was tempered by the harsh reality of the devastation the virus continues to inflict.
The United States surpassed 300,000 virus-related deaths on Monday, reporting at least 1,670 new ones, along with at least 201,000 new cases.
The first doses of an FDA-authorized Covid-19 vaccine have been delivered to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, less than a year after the disease was first spotted in the US, officials said Monday.
Operation Warp Speed, a public-private effort, developed the Pfizer vaccine in less than a year, an astonishing feat since most vaccines take years to develop.
By:Isaac Clottey
