‘Now available’: Donald Trump tweets celebrating the arrival of Moderna vaccine

US
President Donald Trump on Saturday put out a congratulatory tweet for the arrival of the Moderna vaccine.

“Congratulations,
the Moderna vaccine is now available!”, Trump tweeted soon after the vaccine
was authorised.

Now authorised, six
million doses of the latest vaccine will soon start getting shipped across the
US, currently the hardest pandemic-hit country in the world, AFP reported.

Also read: Political leaders line up for early COVID-19 vaccines

The US is the first
nation to authorise the two-dose regimen from Moderna, after several Western
countries recently approved the usage of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine
was approved by Britain on December 2, followed by several countries including the
US and Canada last week.

The United States,
where so far 310,000 people have died from COVID-19 and 115,000 are
hospitalised amidst a sharp winter surge, millions of doses are now slated to be
shipped this weekend from cold storage sites across Memphis and Louisville,
overseen by logistics firm McKesson.

Also read: China says ‘space for cooperation’ with Biden, warns US of ‘McCarthyism’

Trump’s tweets stand
largely contrasting to his initial COVID-19 response in 2020, as denying the
ill-effects of the Coronavirus and initially claiming they have it totally
under control, Trump was seen occupying public spaces without a mask, before
announcing that he and First Lady Melania Trump have contracted the disease on
October 2.

Trump, aged 74, falls
under the demographic to be largely affected by COVID-19, but interestingly downplayed
the practice of wearing masks.