END IN SIGHT?

Operation Warp Speed Chief Says Nursing Home Residents Could Get Vaccine by End of December

“I think we may start to see some impact on the most susceptible people probably in the month of January and February,” Operation Warp Speed’s Dr. Moncef Slaoui said on Sunday.

Nursing home residents could get a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of December, the White House’s vaccine chief said on Sunday. Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientist of Operation Warp Speed—the Trump administration’s vaccine deployment program—told CNN’s State of the Union he expected the Food and Drug Administration to approve Pfizer’s vaccine soon, putting elderly group home residents on track to be vaccinated in December or January.

“I think we may start to see some impact on the most susceptible people probably in the month of January and February,” Dr. Slaoui told Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday. “But on a population basis, for our lives to start getting back to normal, we’re talking about April or May.” Nursing homes have been among the most devastated by COVID-19. The New York Times estimates that at least 106,000 deaths from COVID-19 were those of nursing home employees and residents.