US troops in Europe receive first coronavirus vaccine shots, army says

The US Army announced on Monday that it has started vaccinating service members deployed overseas belonging to the European Command against the novel coronavirus.

"US Army Health Clinics in Ansbach, Grafenwoehr and Vilseck [Germany] conducted their first inoculations of healthcare workers with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Dec. 28, 2020," the announcement said.

Initial vaccinations are limited to healthcare workers and first responders but will expand to larger groups of servicemen over the next several months, the announcement added.

The United States has authorized two vaccines--from the bio-tech companies Pfizer and Moderna--to conduct an ongoing mass immunization against the coronavirus. Each is administered in two shots with an interval of several weeks required between them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last week that more than a million Americans have received the first dose of the vaccine.