President-elect Joe Biden had formed a Covid advisory team after the declaration of the election results. The scientific advisers in Biden’s team will meet with the manufacturers of vaccines in the coming days as the presidential transition remains almost frozen because of Donald Trump’s reluctance to concede his defeat in the election. Infectious disease experts have stated that delayed handoff of vaccine would be dubious during a public health crisis, and can complicate public health situation.

In the US, corona-virus disease has entered its most dangerous phase in the context of the president-elect’s outreach to vaccine manufacturers. The seven-day rolling average for new daily cases stood at 145,400 (as of Saturday) as per the data from John Hopkins University. This signifies that the country is adding about 1million current cases a week, with deaths averaging 820 a day as of Saturday, a 33% increase in just two weeks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease asserted that the arrival of vaccines would not be like flipping a switch to come back to normal life. The first doses will become applicable for people of the high-risk groups after this year. He asserted that America must maintain stringency in measures such as wearing masks, social distancing and frequently washing hands well.

Various vaccine manufacturers are in the final phase of testing their formulations. The government has inaugurated a program known as “Operation Warp Speed”, supported by the White House to speedily manufacture and dispense 10 million doses of vaccine. The shot will be available free to every American and the aim is to have most people vaccinated by about this time next year.

A top health official in the Trump administration, which is in the blues regarding Transition, has asserted that 20 million doses would be available by this month-end and an additional 20 million by the end of the year. Assistant HHS secretary, Brett Giroir, seconded Fauci’s assertion that Americans must follow basic public health precautions adding that if they do not follow these things, then the cases will continue to rise.

It should be underscored that there is a concern regarding the lack of communication, especially regarding vaccine roll-out, between the Trump administration and the transition team of Biden.

Moderna, a US biotech firm on Monday announced that its experimental vaccine against Covid-19 was almost 95 percent effective, marking a second major breakthrough in the quest to end the pandemic. It released the early results from a clinical trial with more than 30,000 participants, after another American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech had said last week that their vaccine was 90 percent effective.