Azar: All nursing home patients may be vaccinated by Christmas

December 13, 2020 KK964 US 0

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 26: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks after a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Health and Human Services on June 26, 2020 in Washington, DC. Cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are rising in southern and western states forcing businesses to remain closed. (Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:15 AM PT – Sunday, December 13, 2020

A federal health official said the coronavirus vaccine could be administered to all nursing home patients by Christmas.

In an interview on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the Trump administration aims to have nursing homes stocked with the vaccine in an effort to treat the most at-risk patients as soon as possible.

We now have begun the distribution of millions of doses of the first @US_FDA authorized COVID-19 vaccine across the United States.

Here in the Vaccine Operations Center at @HHSGov, the #OperationWarpSpeed team will monitor the distribution and delivery of the vaccine. pic.twitter.com/xiiih3ykBp

— Secretary Alex Azar (@SecAzar) December 13, 2020

Azar added almost all of the nursing homes nationwide had signed up for the federal distribution program. He called the progress “remarkable.”

“The vaccines are going out, as soon as they receive the vaccines, this is according to the governors telling us to ship to them, we could have every nursing home patient vaccinated in the United States by Christmas,” Azar noted. “It’s really a remarkable, remarkable progress.”

LANSING, MI – DECEMBER 13: Shipments of the Pfizer And BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are loaded into a UPS plane at the Capital Region International Airport on December 13, 2020 in Lansing, Michigan. The first doses of the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine will be distributed to all 50 states. (Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)

According to reports, elderly and frontline workers will receive the vaccination first. The general population is expected to receive it soon thereafter.