Initial doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in US to begin from Monday

Initial doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine will be delivered to states from Monday morning, said General Gustave Perna, head of the Donald Trump-led administration's Operation Warp Speed, on Saturday (local time).

The Hill quoted Perna as saying that 145 distribution sites will receive the vaccine on Monday, 425 sites on Tuesday, and 66 sites on Wednesday.

The first shipments of Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine will leave Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, reported CNN.

On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration authorised Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use for the prevention of coronavirus disease in individuals 16 years of age and older.

"We are having this mass casualty event every day here in the US. But now we have this vaccine developed in record time that can, in time, really save us and save our country and save the world from this awful pandemic," emergency physician Dr Leana Wen told CNN's Chris Cuomo moments after the authorization.

"This is really a monumental moment for us," she added.

The US is the sixth country -- after the UK, Bahrain, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico -- to clear the vaccine. Other authorizations, including by the European Union, are expected within weeks.

According to the latest update by the Johns Hopkins University, as many as 15,998,522 in the US have tested positive for coronavirus and 296,977 deaths have been reported so far.