First COVID-19 Vaccine Could Arrive as Early as December 11

Moncef Slaoui, the head of the United States government's effort to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, said the first Americans to receive a vaccine - if all things go according to plan - could be as early as the second week of December.

The US-based pharma giant will charge governments between $25 and $37 per dose of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, depending on the amount ordered, Chief Executive Stephane Bancel told German weekly Welt am Sonntag (WamS).

Slaoui said that means, if authorized, the vaccine could be rolled out the next day.

The Moderna CEO told WamS that his company was engaged in negotiations with the EU Commission for the delivery of its vaccine against Covid-19.

Moderna is expected to seek approval later in December for its COVID-19 vaccine.

"I'm very, very concerned about the hesitancy as it exists", Slaoui told ABC earlier on Sunday.

However, Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn't believe that life can be "normal" again around May.

Slaoui said he thought it would help in persuading vaccine skeptics to learn that trials have shown the new vaccines to be 95 percent effective - well above the 50 percent level that an earlier target for vaccine approval.

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He continued: "I really hope and look forward to seeing the level of the negative perception of the vaccine decrease and people's acceptance increases".

Last week, however, Dr Fauci offered a more conservative timeline, telling CNN that he thinks the nation could start getting back to relative normality by April or July of 2021 and saying he thought that would be possible to achieve by the second or third quarter next year.

On November 11, Russian Federation had said that its vaccine Sputnik V is 92 per cent effective at protecting people from COVID-19 according to the first interim analysis.

Experts have said that initially there won't be enough vaccine for everyone.

Officials have yet to announce which groups in the population would receive the vaccine first, though health care workers are certain to receive priority, followed by vulnerable groups like the elderly.

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By the end of 2020, Moderna expects to produce approximately 20 million doses of its mRNA-1273 vaccine.