U.S. plans to distribute 6.4 million doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine in mid-December

The U.S. plans to send 6.4 million doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine across the U.S. within 24 hours of the vaccine getting emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, officials said Tuesday. The goal is to distribute 40 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 20 million people. States were informed of their allocations on Friday, and they will probably be advised to inoculate front-line health care workers first, said Gen. Gustave Perna, the logistics chief of the U.S. vaccination effort.

The FDA will get a recommendation on whether to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech shots after a Dec. 10 vaccine advisory committee meeting, and final say over emergency approval will go to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. "While we cannot predict how long the FDA's review will take, the FDA will review the request as expeditiously as possible, while still doing so in a thorough and science-based manner," Hahn said in a statement. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar predicted approval would come "soon after" the Dec. 10 meeting.

Within two days of FDA approval, an independent advisory board to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet publicly to finalize recommendations on who should get the first shots. Then it will be up to the governors of each state, Perna said, describing the federal government as the "air traffic controller" of vaccine distribution.

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Getting frozen vials of vaccine — Pfizer's needs to be stored -94 degrees Fahrenheit — to hospitals and other distribution centers across the U.S., then tracking that the right people get two doses of the same vaccine weeks apart will be a massive logistical challenge, as The Washington Post explains.

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices says it will recommend that 20 million health care workers and 3 million people in long-term care facilities get first priority, then about 87 million other essential workers, 100 million adults with high-risk medical conditions, and 53 million senior citizens 65 and older. The general public will probably start getting vaccinated in April.