On December 14, 2020, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the United States. Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, was the first to receive the vaccine outside of clinical trials. The vaccine has been authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Canadian News Today Drug Administration (FDA) and has an efficacy rate of 95%. The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine marks a crucial turning point in the fight against the pandemic, which has infected over 70 million people worldwide and caused over 1.5 million deaths.
As more vaccines become available and are distributed around the world, there is hope that the virus can be brought under control and life can return to some semblance of normalcy.