Health, defense departments give update on Operation Warp Speed, COVID-19 vaccine distribution

WASHINGTON – (This event has ended. Click here for more stories about the COVID-19 vaccine.)

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense are expected to hold a briefing on Operation Warp Speed and the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The briefing will be livestreamed in this article at 8:45 a.m., but delays are possible. If there is not a livestream available, check back at a later time.

Hundreds of more hospitals around the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots to their workers in a rapid expansion of the U.S. vaccination drive Tuesday, while a second vaccine moved to the cusp of government authorization.

Packed in dry ice, shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine began arriving Tuesday at more than 400 additional hospitals and other distribution sites.

The first 3 million shots are being strictly rationed to front-line health workers and nursing home patients, with hundreds of millions more shots needed over the coming months to protect most Americans.

The rollout provided a measure of encouragement to exhausted doctors, nurses and other hospital staffers around the country.

Read also:

• First COVID-19 vaccines administered at UT Health on Tuesday
• Some health care workers hesitant to get COVID-19 vaccine during initial distribution
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