Trump tells supporters Covid-19 vaccine to be available from next week

Coronavirus vaccines will be made available in the US next week, US President Donald Trump said at the Saturday rally in Valdosta, Georgia.

"Vaccines are on their way at a level that nobody ever thought possible, it would have taken another administration five years, it took us seven months, and they're starting next week, and we're going to start vaccinating, and a lot of people are already vaccinated," Trump said.

Earlier this week, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) committee voted to give healthcare workers and nursing home residents the first of the COVID-19 vaccines once the doses are rolled out, within three weeks.

CDC slides released at a live-streamed meeting this week showed the agency expected around 40 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of December, with weekly shipments of 5 million to 10 million doses expected once a vaccine is authorized by regulators.

According to Moncef Slaoui, an adviser to the Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed" plan on the vaccines, some 60 million to 70 million doses could be available per month beginning in January, after the expected US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US has surpassed 14.5 million. More than 281,000 people have died from the coronavirus infection in the US, which has the highest COVID-19 death toll and the largest number of confirmed cases of all the countries in the world.