U.S. begins historic first shipments of COVID vaccine

The first shipments of Pfizer’s COVID-19 left a Michigan factory on Sunday, kicking off a historic effort to stop a surging pandemic that is claiming the lives of more than 2,400 Americans a day.

Mask-wearing workers at a Pfizer factory in Kalamazoo began packing up the vaccine in dry ice early Sunday morning and loaded the first shipments onto trucks bound for FedEx and UPS planes that will whisk the precious cargo across the country.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar on CBS Face the Nation Sunday laid out the ambitious distribution plan for the coming weeks and months ahead.

"We’re shipping 2.9 million doses of the vaccine this week, so whenever they get them in arms, that is 2.9 million people getting vaccinated... We’ll be getting more and more Pfizer product and we’ll be getting 12.5 million Moderna product assuming we get approval by the end of this week on Moderna... 20 million vaccinations this month and then we think we will be up to 50 million people by January, and 100 million shots in arms by the end of February just from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines."

Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui said on Sunday that the U.S. expects to immunize 100 million people, or about 30% of its population, by the end of March - a slightly longer timeline than what Azar described.

There is a massive logistical challenge in shipping the vaccine.

Since doses need to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius - or minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit - it requires enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers to maintain temperatures.

Meanwhile delivery drivers are giving the vaccine top priority over holiday gifts and other parcels.

They will deliver many of the "suitcases" into the hands of healthcare providers on Monday. The shipments are the first of three expected this week.

Although the federal government is coordinating distribution efforts, states have the final say over who gets the first shots. The federal government is sending the first shipments to more than 600 locations.

Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes are first in line to receive the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart.

This comes as U.S. regulators late on Friday authorized emergency use of the vaccine, following similar moves by the UK and Canada, less than a year after the first cases were reported in the United States.