Tag Archives: COVID-19. vaccines

EU, under pressure over vaccine rollouts, considers switch to emergency approvals

By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Tuesday that it was considering emergency approvals for COVID-19 vaccines as a faster alternative to more rigorous conditional marketing authorizations which have been used so far.

The move would mark a big shift in approach to vaccine approvals, as it would entail using a procedure that the EU had considered dangerous and that before the COVID-19 pandemic had been reserved for exceptional authorization at national level of drugs for terminally ill patients, including cancer treatments.

The potential change comes as the EU executive and the bloc’s drug regulator come under increasing pressure for what some consider slow vaccine approvals, which have contributed to a slower rollout of COVID-19 shots in the 27-nation union, compared to the United States and former EU member Britain.

“We are ready to reflect with the member states on all possible avenues to indeed accelerate the approval of the vaccines,” an EU Commission spokesman told a news conference after the matter was discussed earlier on Tuesday at a COVID-19 meeting with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

One option could be “an emergency authorization of vaccines at EU level with shared liability among member states,” the spokesman said, adding that work on this could start very quickly if EU governments supported the idea.

It was not clear whether an EU-wide emergency authorization procedure, if agreed upon, would entail the same conditions as emergency approvals granted at national level, the commission spokesman told Reuters.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) cannot currently issue emergency approvals but in exceptional circumstances has recommended the compassionate use of drugs before marketing authorization.

This procedure was used in April to initially authorize doctors to use Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment against COVID-19. The drug was later given conditional approval by EMA.

CHANGE OF TACK

National emergency approvals are allowed under EU laws, but they force countries to take full responsibility if something goes wrong with a vaccine, whereas under the more rigorous marketing authorization, pharmaceutical companies remain liable for their vaccines.

The EU Commission had said that national emergency authorizations should not be used for COVID-19 vaccines because faster approvals could reduce regulators’ ability to check efficacy and safety data.

This could also boost vaccine hesitancy, which is already high in some countries, EU officials had said.

One senior EU official said the emergency procedure had so far usually been used at national level for terminally ill patients and the EU had instead chosen the lengthier conditional marketing authorization because with vaccines “we inject healthy people” and the risk was disproportionate.

The change of tack would come after Eastern European countries, including Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, approved or said they were considering approval of Russian and Chinese vaccines with national emergency procedures.

Britain has also used the emergency procedure to approve COVID-19 vaccines.

The EU Commission also said last month it was working on a possible fast-track approval of upgraded anti-variant vaccines, which had already been authorized and would need fewer comprehensive checks before they are made available to the public.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; additional reporting by Emilio Parodi; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. to give Americans COVID-19 vaccines before discussing sharing with Mexico: White House

By Steve Holland and Dave Graham

WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Monday downplayed the prospect of sharing coronavirus vaccines with Mexico, saying it is focused first on getting its own population protected against a pandemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

The remarks by White House press secretary Jen Psaki came hours before Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is expected to ask U.S. President Joe Biden to consider sharing some of its COVID-19 vaccine supply.

“The administration’s focus is on ensuring that every American is vaccinated. And once we accomplish that objective we’re happy to discuss further steps,” Psaki said at a White House news conference.

The two leaders are due to hold a virtual meeting later on Monday that is also likely to encompass immigration and trade.

Biden has predicted the United States will have enough supply by late July to inoculate all Americans. U.S. authorities have administered 76.9 million doses to date, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enough for 23% of the population to get the two doses recommended for full protection under the vaccines that have been deployed so far.

Mexico has vaccinated roughly 2.5 million doses so far, enough for about 1% of the population, according to data compiled by Reuters. Officials have been frustrated by bottlenecks in supply and raised concerns that wealthy countries are hoarding vaccines.

According to Reuters reporting, Mexico would aim to pay back Washington once pharmaceutical companies have delivered on their orders.

Mexican magazine Proceso said Lopez Obrador had asked Biden for help on vaccines in January.

“We’d like to get an answer on a request that we’ve already made … about the vaccines,” Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference on Monday. “Provided he’s of the view the matter should be addressed. We must be respectful.”

IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY

Immigration, security, climate change and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal were also likely to feature in talks, said Lopez Obrador, a left-wing nationalist.

Mindful of pressure to curb unlawful immigration, Lopez Obrador said on Saturday he wants Biden to help secure U.S. work permits for Mexicans and Central Americans, saying the United States needed another 600,000-800,000 workers.

On Monday, Lopez Obrador said he wanted to broker an agreement that covered all kinds of workers, including “professionals.”

The two leaders could also discuss Lopez Obrador’s efforts to strengthen a state-run electricity utility, the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE).

The Mexican president has cast the legislation as a matter of national sovereignty, arguing that past governments skewed the electricity market in favor of private operators.

Business groups have condemned the bill, saying it risks violating the USMCA and endangers Mexico’s renewable energy targets because it puts wind and solar generators at a disadvantage against the CFE, a heavy user of fossil fuels.

(Reporting by Dave Graham, Steve Holland and Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and David Alire Garcia; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Giles Elgood and Aurora Ellis)

UK to prioritize next stage of COVID-19 vaccines by age, not job

By Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) – Police and teachers will not jump to the head of the queue in the second phase of Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination rollout, with people instead prioritized by age, officials advising the government said on Friday, describing this as the best way to keep up the pace of immunizations.

Britain’s vaccine program has been among the fastest in the world, meeting a government target to offer a first dose of vaccination to 15 million high-risk people by mid-February.

Some frontline workers such as police and teachers had been calling for prioritization on the basis of their jobs, but Professor Wei Shen Lim, COVID-19 chairman for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), said such an approach could complicate the rollout.

“Following an age-based program will be simple, and simplicity has been one of the cornerstones of the current program in terms of speed and its success,” he told a news conference.

Britain aims to complete the first phase of its vaccine rollout by mid-April.

While the priority list for that phase was largely determined by age, with all over-50s set to be offered a vaccine, health and care workers and clinically vulnerable people have also been prioritized.

Announcing the prioritization list for phase 2, Lim said all those aged between 40-49 would be next in line for the shot, then those aged 30-39, then those aged 18-29.

The JCVI said that an age-based approach remained the most effective way of reducing death and hospitalization from COVID-19, even in those under 50. Giving shots by job would be logistically complex and could result in delays, it said.

The government said it would follow the recommended approach, but not everyone welcomed the advice.

John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation of England & Wales, said it was “a contemptible betrayal of police officers.”

“Their anger is palpable, this will not be forgotten.”

(Reporting by Alistair Smout; Editing by Michael Holden, Elizabeth Piper and Frances Kerry)

U.S. House budget committee approves $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee on Monday approved legislation with $1.9 trillion in new coronavirus relief, advancing a top priority of President Joe Biden.

The measure passed the panel on a largely party-line vote of 19-16. The full House, which has a slim Democratic majority, hopes to pass the bill later this week. It would stimulate the U.S. economy and carry out Biden’s proposals to provide additional money for COVID-19 vaccines and other medical equipment.

Last week, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer predicted his deeply divided chamber would approve the bill before March 14, when the latest round of federal unemployment benefits expires.

Biden and his fellow Democrats want to pass the plan quickly to speed a new round of direct payments to U.S. households as well as extend federal unemployment benefits and assist state and local governments. The U.S. economy has struggled over the past year under job layoffs and shuttered businesses resulting from a pandemic that has killed 500,000 Americans.

But the Democrats are using a procedural strategy called reconciliation to advance the bill, which will allow them to pass it in the Senate without Republican support.

“We are in a race against time. Aggressive, bold action is needed before our nation is more deeply and permanently scarred by the human and economic costs of inaction,” Representative John Yarmuth, chairman of the Budget Committee, said before the vote.

Republicans pushed back on the president’s price tag, which follows $4 trillion in COVID-19 aid last year.

“An estimated $1 trillion of those funds is actually yet to be spent,” Representative Buddy Carter told the committee. “Why do we need to spend an additional $2 trillion of money that is being taken from current generations?”

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Peter Cooney)

U.S. storms delay COVID-19 vaccines in all 50 states: White House

By Rebecca Spalding

(Reuters) – The United States has a backlog of six million COVID-19 vaccine doses due to winter storms and power outages, White House officials said at a media briefing on Friday, adding that the federal government expects to catch up with vaccine distribution by next week.

All 50 states are impacted, said Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team. He said delays were due to road closures, shipping company employees unable to get to work, and power outages in certain locations.

States should prepare to handle previously expected doses as well as the backlogged shots, Slavitt said. The United States has been ramping up shipments of vaccines.

Slavitt said the packaging plant that is working on Moderna Inc’s vaccine is “just now” coming online after roads were cleared. It intends to have vaccines on planes by Sunday night for delivery next week, he added.

Earlier this week, Moderna said there may be some short-term delays in vaccine deliveries but that it expected the issue to be resolved soon.

U.S. infectious disease response leader Dr. Anthony Fauci said a trial testing the Pfizer Inc/BioNtech SE vaccine on children younger than 12 would start in April, with results anticipated a year later.

The two companies on Thursday said they have started an international study to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of their COVID-19 vaccine in healthy pregnant women.

(Reporting By Rebecca Spalding and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Peter Henderson and Bill Berkrot)

Racing the virus: Why tweaking the vaccines won’t be simple

By Julie Steenhuysen and Michael Erman

CHICAGO (Reuters) – After developing and rolling out COVID-19 vaccines at record speed, drugmakers are already facing variants of the rapidly-evolving coronavirus that may render them ineffective, a challenge that will require months of research and a massive financial investment, according to disease experts.

Executives from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE are considering new versions of their vaccines to respond to the most concerning variants identified so far. That is just one piece of the work needed to stay ahead of the virus, nearly a dozen experts told Reuters.

A global surveillance network to assess emerging variants must be built. Scientists need to establish what level of antibodies will be required to protect people from COVID-19 and determine when vaccines need to be altered. And regulators must convey what is needed to demonstrate updated vaccines are still safe and effective.

“At this point, there is no evidence that these variants have changed the equation in terms of protection from the vaccine,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “But we have to be prepared for that.”

Johnson & Johnson told Reuters the concerning variant first identified in South African has got its attention and will tweak its vaccine accordingly if needed. Pfizer said it could produce a new vaccine relatively quickly, but a top vaccine executive said manufacturing it presents additional challenges.

The urgency of this effort is clear.

Moderna on Monday said lab studies showed antibodies made in response to its vaccine were six times less effective at neutralizing a lab-created version of a South African variant than prior versions of the virus.

A study released on Wednesday ahead of peer review found the South African variant reduced neutralizing antibodies 8.6-fold for the Moderna vaccine and by 6.5-fold for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot, although a separate Pfizer-backed study released on Wednesday suggests its vaccine may be more hardy. Moderna said this week it is starting work on a potential booster shot.

COULD TAKE MONTHS

Just how far protection can drop before a COVID-19 vaccine needs to be altered is not yet known. With influenza, an eightfold drop in vaccine-induced antibody protection means time to update. That does not necessarily apply to this coronavirus.

“The problem is we don’t know what the cut point is for coronavirus,” said Dr. John Mascola, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose scientists helped develop Moderna’s vaccine.

Mascola said both studies testing the Moderna vaccine against the South African variant are roughly in the “same ballpark.” It could be that antibody protection is high enough from the vaccine that it will still be effective, he said.

NIAID scientists are analyzing data from Moderna’s late-stage trial to see what level of neutralizing antibodies is required for protection. They are comparing individuals who were vaccinated but got sick anyway to vaccinated people who remained healthy.

It could take two months to complete this work, Mascola said. They hope to produce a benchmark for the minimum level of vaccine-induced antibodies needed to protect against COVID-19.

A global surveillance network is also needed to identify troubling new variants as they emerge, similar to one used to track fast-mutating flu viruses. That could cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States alone.

Richard Webby, a flu surveillance expert from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, said the United States could probably build a system to identify variants fairly quickly. Developing the capability to determine whether they evade current vaccines will take more time.

The United States is currently conducting genetic sequencing to look for changes in the virus in just 0.3% of positive coronavirus tests. That pales compared with 10% in the UK, which was first to discover a major mutation in the virus that increases transmission by at least 50%. Experts said countries should sequence at least 5% of positive cases to detect significant changes in the virus.

Companies are waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to relay what testing will be needed for altered vaccines, said Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s top viral vaccine scientists. With influenza vaccines, companies can make changes without new trials. “But that’s after doing it for 50 years,” he said.

Peter Marks, who oversees the FDA’s vaccine approval process, has said small trials testing updated vaccines in around 400 participants may be needed at first. Even that could add months to the process.

Norman Baylor, chief executive of Biologics Consulting and a former FDA vaccines official, said the agency will lay out the regulatory road. But public health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization would decide when vaccines should be updated, as with flu.

Altering Pfizer’s vaccine would require “a very minor change,” Dormitzer said.

Like Moderna’s, it uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which relies on synthetic genes that can be generated and manufactured in weeks.

He estimates the company could make a prototype version in a week or so, and take another two months to scale up and update their lab tests.

J&J, which is expected to release late-stage trial data on its vaccine within days, has laid the groundwork to address troubling virus changes, Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels told Reuters. Its trial included sites in South Africa, which should give the company insight on that variant.

If a change is necessary, Stoffels said J&J likely would add a second strain into its existing vaccine.

“We are looking at this with a lot of attention,” he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

31.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed, 12.3 million administered: U.S. CDC

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 12,279,180 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 31,161,075 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on Jan. 14, the agency had administered 11,148,991 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 30,628,175 doses.

The agency said 10,595,866 people had received 1 or more doses while 1,610,524 people have got the second dose as of Friday.

A total of 1,384,963 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru)

Some U.S. nursing home residents face delays for COVID-19 vaccines despite extreme risk

By Lisa Baertlein and Deena Beasley

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A former Arkansas health official is sounding alarms about the pace of coronavirus vaccines being administered to residents of long-term care facilities under a U.S. plan that puts major pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens in charge of many of the shots.

Fewer than 10% of doses allocated to those Arkansas seniors have been administered, according to the state health department. The two pharmacies are working with about 40% of the state’s facilities. Some of those were told that they were scheduled for February or March, said Dr. Joe Thompson, former Arkansas surgeon general and chief executive of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement

“This is not acceptable,” said Thompson. “We’re seeing a failure in deployment by CVS and Walgreens.”

Federal health officials in recent days have urged broadening vaccine eligibility to tens of millions of Americans to speed the national inoculation program rollout. Meanwhile, seniors at some long-term care facilities – who account for about 1% of the U.S. population but 40% of COVID-19 deaths and were supposed to be at the front of the line – continue to wait.

State and local officials and long-term care operators in states including Florida, California, Arizona, Indiana and Pennsylvania told Reuters they have turned to alternative providers for vaccinations for their residents or staff because the pharmacy chains were scheduling shots weeks out.

Some 75,000 long-term care facilities signed up to receive vaccines from CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Pharmacy Partnership Program.

“I think they face serious bandwidth issues in terms of scheduling,” said David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School professor and healthcare policy expert. “I find it very distressing that we haven’t been doing this more rapidly. This is really a matter of life or death.”

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson in a statement on Thursday said the two pharmacy chains assured him that all long-term care residents assigned to them would be vaccinated by the end of this month.

Many states prioritized homes with patients requiring medical care, which contributed to delays at other long-term care facilities.

CVS said it plans to finish all shots at assigned facilities within nine to 12 weeks of the first dose. That means states like California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, which were among the last to activate the second-phase of facility vaccinations, may not be finished until April.

“State decisions on which facilities are activated when have a significant impact on timing,” CVS spokesman T.J. Crawford said, noting that the company has administered 1 million shots and is on track with its federal agreement.

Others hurdles included confirming vaccine availability, the winter holidays, vaccine hesitancy and fresh COVID-19 outbreaks, the companies said.

That resulted in “a little bit slower start than what we were hoping for. Now that we’ve gotten past the first of the year, you’re seeing a quick and rapid acceleration,” said Rick Gates, Walgreens’ senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare. The company has done more than 500,000 shots and expects to be done by March.

‘OVERWHELMED BY THE SHEER VOLUME’

Meanwhile, central Florida’s Seminole County is deploying mobile clinics to some assisted living facilities.

“We went because they either have not been contacted by the private providers or they had concerns because of some type of issue,” said county emergency manager Alan Harris.

“CVS and Walgreens, I think, are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of long-term care facilities in Florida,” Harris said.

The state of Florida has hired health services firm CDR Maguire to take over vaccinations at about 1,900 assisted living facilities that CVS or Walgreens had scheduled on or after Jan. 24.

Los Angeles County opted out of the CVS-Walgreens partnership and is asking facilities that can to pick up and administer vaccine themselves. In Northern California’s Contra Costa County, nonprofit Choice in Aging joined John Muir Health and Kaiser Permanente in pitching in to help.

Choice in Aging is targeting facilities with six or fewer beds in historically underserved communities. “This is a population that is never prioritized,” said Choice in Aging CEO Debbie Toth.

The CDC on Thursday said 26% of the 4.7 million vaccine doses allocated for long-term care sites had been administered, lagging even the woeful 36% of the 30.6 million available nationwide.

West Virginia, which opted out of CDC Pharmacy Partnership, did extensive planning and tapped its existing network of long-term care pharmacies to quickly vaccinate nursing home residents in an all-hands-on-deck effort, said Dr. Michael Wasserman, former president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.

“Community pharmacies absolutely should be involved,” said American Pharmacists Association CEO Scott Knoer. “I wish they would have been from the get-go.”

(Reporting By Lisa Baertlein and Deena Beasley; additional reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)

PM Johnson says UK in ‘race against time’ as it faces worst weeks of pandemic

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday Britain was in “a race against time” to roll out COVID-19 vaccines as deaths hit record highs and hospitals ran out of oxygen, and his top medical adviser said the pandemic’s worst weeks were imminent.

A new, more transmissible variant of the disease is now surging through the population, with one in 20 people in parts of London now infected, threatening to overwhelm the National Health Service (NHS) as hospitals fill up with patients.

The death toll in the United Kingdom has been soaring and now stands in excess of 81,000 – the world’s fifth-highest official toll – while more than three million people have tested positive.

In a bid to get on top of the pandemic and to try to restore some degree of normality by the spring, Britain is rushing out its largest ever vaccination program, with shots to be offered to about 15 million people by the middle of next month.

“It’s a race against time because we can all see the threat that our NHS faces, the pressure it’s under, the demand in intensive care units, the pressure on ventilated beds, even the shortage of oxygen in some places,” Johnson said on a visit to a vaccination center in Bristol, in southwest England.

“This is a very perilous moment. The worst thing now for us is to allow success in rolling out a vaccine program to breed any kind of complacency about the state of the pandemic.”

The government’s chief medical adviser Chris Whitty earlier said the situation was set to deteriorate.

“The next few weeks are going to be the worst weeks of this pandemic in terms of numbers into the NHS,” he told BBC TV.

“Anybody who is not shocked by the number of people in hospital who are seriously ill at the moment and who are dying over the course of this pandemic, I think, has not understood this at all. This is an appalling situation,” he told BBC TV.

VACCINATION TARGET

Health minister Matt Hancock said there were now more than 32,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital, far more than the roughly 18,000 hospitalized during the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in April.

Johnson’s government is pinning its hopes on a mass vaccination program after Britain became the first country to approve vaccines developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and by Pfizer/BioNTech. It also approved Moderna’s shot last Friday.

Its plan, announced on Monday, envisages two million shots being delivered to around 2,700 centers a week in England by the end of January, with the aim of immunizing tens of millions of people by the spring and all adults offered a vaccine by the autumn.

The first daily vaccination statistics showed that nearly 2.3 million people had so far received their first doses of a COVID vaccine and nearly 400,000 had received a second dose.

Johnson said more had received the vaccine in Britain than in any other European country but admitted that inoculating 15 million people in the four highest risk levels, including those over 70 and frontline health workers, by a Feb. 15 target was “a huge ask”.

“We believe it’s achievable, we’re going throw absolutely everything at it, to get it done,” he said.

Opposition Labor leader Keir Starmer, who has repeatedly accused Johnson of being too slow to respond to the pandemic, said the prime minister’s indecision had cost lives and worsened the economic impact

Ministers and health chiefs have pleaded with Britons to stay at home, amid fears that some people are not adhering to the rules strictly enough, along with concern that the virus is being spread in supermarkets.

Hancock said that support bubbles, where households can “bubble” with another if they are single-person or fit other criteria, would be maintained, but that rules on exercising with someone else could be restricted.

“Where we have to tighten them, we will,” Johnson said of the rules.

(Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton, William Schomberg, Paul Sandle, Alistair Smout and James Davey; writing by Michael Holden; editing by Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Angus MacSwan and Gareth Jones)

U.S. states enlist medical, nursing students to give out COVID-19 vaccine

By Tina Bellon and Melissa Fares

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. states, facing a backlog in administering coronavirus vaccines, are asking medical and nursing students, and even firefighters, to help give the shots and free up healthcare workers battling a raging pandemic at overcrowded hospitals.

At least seven state health departments are seeking volunteers for their vaccination sites, some partnering with local universities or nursing schools to offer incentives such as tuition discounts and hands-on training. Others are teaching first responders to administer shots.

The national rollout of COVID-19 vaccines are the best hope to end a pandemic that has cost the lives of more than 320,000 Americans and crippled the U.S. economy.

This month, U.S. regulators authorized the first two COVID-19 vaccines, one from drugmakers Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE and another from Moderna Inc.

As of Wednesday, nearly 10 million doses have been delivered across the country, but only about 1 million administered due to staffing shortages at hospitals and the special requirements for preparing the shots. The slow pace of the vaccination campaign threatens the federal government’s goal of inoculating nearly 20 million people by year’s end.

While inoculation is currently focused on frontline healthcare workers, the vaccination drive is expected to expand to tens of millions of essential industry workers beginning in January or February.

From New York to Tennessee, states are hoping medical and nursing students will free up medical staff focused on tending to the record numbers of new COVID-19 patients.

“Being able to staff vaccination clinics with volunteers from our reserve workforce means that staff at the vaccination sites can continue to perform their normal duties, which is crucial as our hospitalization rate has increased,” said a spokeswoman for Indiana University’s School of Medicine.

‘STRIKE BACK AGAINST COVID’

As the first vaccines arrived, Indiana health officials called on the state university because of its far-reaching campuses. More than 630 of Indiana University’s medical and nursing students have signed up as volunteers and receive 90 minutes of online and hands-on training.

Fourth-year medical student Nicholas Clough began administering COVID-19 vaccines to frontline healthcare workers last Wednesday. He has lost several family members during the pandemic.

“It finally felt like it was a real, tangible strike back against COVID,” said Clough, 26.

The University of Wisconsin is offering a $500 tuition credit to students with medical credentials working at understaffed hospitals during the winter break, including administering vaccines.

The university is also talking to government officials to turn universities into vaccine distribution hubs, a spokesman said.

In California, fire department paramedics have been trained to administer the vaccine, initially to fellow employees.

“They have already received online training and will have another one-hour live training session,” said Peter Sanders, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, which expected its first shipment of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday.

Michigan has set up a volunteer registry allowing officials and hospitals to recruit help for upcoming vaccine clinics.

“We encourage all medical and nursing students to register now so they will be ready when their assistance is needed!” a health department spokeswoman said.

Other states are not actively recruiting nursing students. A spokeswoman for Georgia’s health department said the state might do so later, as the vaccine becomes more widely available to the public.

Depending on state licensing laws, medical and nursing students are allowed to administer vaccines, often under supervision of a fully-licensed professional.

Facing a shortage of vaccinators, the Association of Immunization Managers, a nonprofit representing state and local health officials, recommends relaxing regulation or adjusting licensing requirements.

At least two states, Massachusetts and New York, have changed their laws in recent weeks to expand those who are eligible to give shots.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Dec. 13 allowed medical, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, podiatric and midwifery students to administer flu and COVID-19 shots under supervision.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon and Melissa Fares in New York; Additional reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Aurora Ellis)