The contrast could hardly be more stark.
Monday, the United States marked the dreadful milestone of more than 300,000 deaths due to COVID-19. That same day, shortly after 9am, a critical care nurse on Long Island became the first US citizen to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Food and Drug Administration's authorization of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech set in motion the most ambitious vaccination campaign in American history. Nearly 3 million doses are targeted to arrive at 636 locations across the country this week.
Most of those sites are health-care facilities, and the first mass innoculations will be focused on protecting frontline workers at those facilities.
A coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna will likely be granted "emergency authorization" this week as well, and distribution will start shortly thereafter.
Also on Monday, Governor Mike DeWine tweeted a video of he and Fran DeWine watching a shipment of the vaccine arriving at The Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.
On the program today, we'll take another deep dive into the latest on the development and implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine, what it looks like for us here in Ohio, and we'll be answering your questions with our Health Reporters.
Later in the program, Kevin Kleps, the Assistant Editor and Sports Business Reporter at Crain's Cleveland Business joins us to talk the latest regarding The Cleveland Indians name change.
A formal statement was released by team owner Paul Dolan announcing the coming change.
- Lisa Ryan, Health Reporter, ideastream
- Anna Huntsman, Health Reporter, ideastream
- Jyoti Gupta, PhD, President, Volk Optical
- Kevin Kleps, Assitant Editor and Sports Business Reporter, Crain's Cleveland Business
