US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine against the novel coronavirus on Tuesday by Patricia Cummings, a clinical nurse manager at the United Medical Center on live television one week after President-elect Joe Biden received his.
In a tweet late Tuesday, Harris said: "Today I got the Covid-19 vaccine. I am incredibly grateful to our frontline health care workers, scientists, and researchers who made this moment possible. When you're able to take the vaccine, get it. This is about saving lives."
After receiving the shot, Harris said she wants to "encourage everyone to get the vaccine. It is relatively painless. It happens really quickly. It is safe".
Harris also confirmed that her husband, Doug Emhoff, would be receiving the first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Tuesday.
"I want to remind people that right in your community is where you can take the vaccine, where you will receive the vaccine, by folks you may know, folks who are otherwise working in the same hospital where your children were born.”
"Folks who are working in the same hospital where an elderly relative received the kind of care that they needed," CNN quoted Harris as saying.
The US Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) for two Covid-19 vaccines: one from Pfizer/BioNTech and one from Moderna. These two have shown similar efficacy levels of near 95 per cent, and both require two doses administered several weeks apart.
On December 18, Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination all on live TV, in a bid to instil confidence among Americans.
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President Donald Trump, who had tested positive for the virus in October, is yet to get vaccinated.
According to Johns Hopkins University, as of Wednesday morning, the US, currently the hardest-hit country in the world by the pandemic, has registered a total of 19,299,960 confirmed coronavirus cases and 334,830 deaths.