The first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine was taken by President-elect Joe Biden, who said he was having the jab to show Americans that it is “safe to take.”
Mr. Biden, including Vice-President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joins a rising number of political leaders having the jab.
On Sunday, the roll-out of Moderna’s second vaccine, which was approved last week, began.
It is said that more than 500,000 Americans have already been vaccinated.
“I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it’s available to take the vaccine,” Mr Biden said from Newark, Delaware, where he got the jab live on TV.
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
He said the Trump administration deserves some credit for the country’s vaccine program being initiated.
The President-elect said that Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, got her first dose earlier in the day. It is predicted that Mr. Biden’s running mate, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will get their first shots next week.
During the administration’s first 100 days in the White House, the Biden team set a target of 100 million Covid-19 vaccinations in the US.
The US has reported more than 18 million cases and 319,000 deaths during the pandemic.
President Donald Trump, who was in a coronavirus hospital in October for three days, has not said when he plans to get the vaccine.
The president is also one of the few top elected leaders in the world not to have earned the first of two jabs.
“I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time,” Mr. Trump wrote in a tweet on December 13.
Some of his advisers have defended the delay, saying he is still protected by the treatments he received to beat the virus.
According to the CDC, about three million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been delivered and more than 500,000 Americans have so far been vaccinated. And the distribution of the Moderna vaccine also started in the country on Sunday, with around six million doses of vaccine available for immediate shipment.
On Saturday, the army general in charge of administering Covid vaccines in the US apologized for a “miscommunication” with some states over the number of doses to be distributed in the initial distribution stages.
More than a dozen states expressed concern about a decrease in the number anticipated. On Friday, more than 100 doctors protested against the university’s vaccine delivery plan at Stanford Medical Center.
They state that in the first round of 5,000 doses, only seven of the more than 1,300 residents – recent medical school graduates – were chosen to receive the vaccine. According to the demonstrators, hospital managers and doctors operating from home were given preference over those working directly with Covid-19 patients.
Officials from Stanford later apologized, saying the university was trying to fix the shortcomings in its proposal.
Source: BBC
