Health experts are on the verge of possibly having two COVID-19 vaccines and ABC13 has learned how the two compare.

According to the FDA, it was 94.1% effective in preventing symptomatic cases. The Pfizer vaccine has claimed a 95% effectiveness.

Both vaccines require two doses, however. For those receiving the Pfizer vaccine, the second dose is administered 21 days after the first. Moderna’s second dose is administered 28 days after the first.

They both also developed the messenger RNA, a new type of vaccine that creates a blueprint for those essential antibodies, without actually infecting people with COVID-19.

They differ once again in how they are stored.

Pfizer’s needs to be stored at 94 degrees below zero. After it thaws, it can be stored in a normal fridge for five days.

Moderna’s vaccine still needs to be kept cold, but rather at a standard freezer temperature, negative four degrees. After it thaws, it can be refrigerated for 30 days.

Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized for people ages 16 and up. Moderna is still seeking authorization for people 18 and older.

The side effects seem to be the biggest thing on people’s minds. So far minor temporary side effects like tiredness and headache have been reported by the CDC.

Here’s a full list of possible side effects that both vaccines can have on people:

• Pain at the site of injection

• Headache

• Fever

• Fatigue

• Chills

• Muscle and joint pain

The difference is that the Moderna vaccine’s side effects were found to be more common after the second dose. Either way, health experts said people may want to consider taking the day off work after getting the second shot.

There are still some areas we need to learn more about. For example, how the vaccine works in children and in pregnant women. Many are also wondering if you can choose which vaccine to get.

Dr. Jill Weatherhead said it’s very unlikely people will get to choose which vaccine they get because it’ll depend on which is available in their area.

Vaccines must not be mixed and matched.

On Tuesday, the first Houston nurses and doctors received a card showing which vaccine they took. Others are likely to get something similar, so it can be presented when receiving the second dose.

U.S. officials said Wednesday they quarantined several thousand doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine in California and Alabama this week after an “anomaly” in the transportation process caused the storage temperature to get too cold.

Pfizer’s vaccine, which was developed with German drugmaker BioNTech, requires a storage temperature of around minus 70 degrees Celsius. Vials of the vaccine are stored in trays, which carry a minimum of 975 doses each, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vaccine “never left the truck,” he said during a press briefing Wednesday. “We returned them immediately back to Pfizer and we sent immediate shipments to replace those two trays. We’re working with the FDA now, CDC, FDA, and Pfizer to determine if that anomaly is safe or not, but we’re taking no chances and we can see that.”

He said the “anomaly” happened again in Alabama.

“All the way on the other side of the country in Alabama, two trays were received at one location. The same anomaly went to minus 92. We were able to stop and quarantine the vaccine, stop and get a replacement shipment to Alabama,” he said.

It’s unclear what caused the storage temperature to fall. Pfizer didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Americans began receiving some of the first shots of Pfizer’s vaccine on Monday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s vaccine Friday. Officials and medical experts had already acknowledged that Pfizer’s vaccine would present some new logistical challenge as it has to be stored at ultracold temperatures.

“We’re talking super cold. It’s completely unprecedented,” Soumi Saha, a pharmacist and vice president of advocacy for Premier, a consulting firm that works with thousands of hospitals and nursing homes.

She said it was “completely new territory” for health systems. “And so this is a brand new logistical challenge in order to distribute this vaccine and get it to the right place and to do so while maintaining the integrity of the product,” she said.

During the briefing, Perna said vaccine deliveries in the U.S. remain on track, with another 886 deliveries expected to be shipped across the nation Thursday. The federal government delivered 2.9 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine this week. Next week, the government plans to ship an additional 2 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine as well as 5.9 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine if cleared by the FDA, Perna said.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, an outside group of medical experts that advises the agency, votes on whether to recommend Moderna’s vaccine for emergency use on Thursday. A favorable vote from the committee will likely clear the path for Moderna’s vaccine to become the second one approved for use in the U.S. behind Pfizer’s. FDA clearance could come as early as Friday.

“It’s about a steady cadence of deliveries to the American people,” Perna said.

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is the next to be considered for emergency use authorization in the United States after the vaccine by Pfizer and BioNTech was approved last week.

Shipments of a second vaccine are likely to coming soon as the FDA gives authorization for the Moderna vaccine.

“The FDA found no serious safety concerns with the Moderna vaccine and affirmed its 95% efficacy,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.

Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are similar in terms of dosage. Both vaccines require two doses with three weeks in between for Pfizer and four weeks for Moderna. However, they differ in storage. Moderna does not require extremely low temperatures. It is likely that the Pfizer vaccine stays at hospitals when it comes to distribution.

“Using that to vaccinate healthcare workers makes more sense than taking that to the long-term care facilities, so it might be that Moderna is used more for that upfront than the Pfizer vaccine,” said Dr. Stephen Schrantz, University of Chicago Medicine.

Moderna has yet to reveal details about its vaccine and distribution plan. Unlike Pfizer, Moderna is a small company that will work with outside contractors.

“The whole distribution plan with Moderna is very different from Pfizer because essentially there is a company called McKesson that is going to handle the entire distribution of the vaccine,” said Hani Mahmassani, director of Northwestern University Transportation.

When Moderna arrives at its destination points, handling the vaccine will be easier than Pfizer due to the less extreme temperature requirements, according to Professor Mahmassani. The Moderna vaccine will be coming from the East Coast instead of Michigan and Wisconsin, where the Pfizer vaccine is located, Mahmassani added.
“From day one, when people ask me, ‘What can go wrong?’ I said, ‘Weather,'” Mahmassani said.

The vaccine will likely not be from Moderna or Pfizer by the time most people get the vaccine. Experts said there will likely be another vaccine in the pipeline that requires one dose and regular refrigeration.

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs and State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers were among the first in the state to receive a recently approved COVID-19 vaccine, receiving the shots during a news conference Monday.

Dobbs, Byers, and other health officials have given pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s vaccine, which already is being distributed to hundreds of providers across the state.

“It’s a big day,” Dobbs said. “We are extremely excited to have a vaccine that is not only extremely effective based on the clinical studies but also seems to have a very favorable side-effect profile. We know how deadly, devastating, and disruptive coronavirus has been for the state of Mississippi.”

The vaccine received emergency use authorization in the U.S. from the Food and Drug Administration Friday.

Dobbs took the vaccine in front of a virtual audience Monday as a show of confidence in the vaccine’s effectiveness and to encourage others to do the same. Mississippi has seen a significant rise in cases over the past several weeks, due in large part to holiday gatherings. Dobbs has recently advocated more strongly for several health guidelines, including wearing facial coverings and social distancing, as cases have increased not only in the state but across the country.

Several other healthcare professionals and organizations in the U.S. also highly publicized their employees being immunized, underscoring its importance and attempting to dispel widespread fears.

Which hospitals are getting the vaccines in Mississippi?

Vaccines began shipping over the weekend to hospitals across the nation and frontline healthcare workers will be the first to receive them. Dobbs said two medical centers in the state have already received their allocations of the vaccine. All Mississippi hospitals will eventually receive an allotment, he said, but when they will receive them will be based on availability.

Marc Rolph, director of communications and marketing for the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said the network received 780 vials of the vaccine — enough for 3,900 doses — on Monday. The hospital anticipates it will begin vaccinating its employees using a tiered system on Wednesday.

More facilities will receive their allocations Tuesday and Wednesday. Dobbs said that five medical centers in the state have the equipment required to store the vaccine on-site, but declined to name them, citing safety and security reasons. Other medical centers and rural hospitals in the state will receive the vaccine through the health department with their partnership with UMMC, he said.

Some long-term care facilities already receiving vaccinations

Although critical healthcare workers will be the first to be eligible to receive the vaccinations in Mississippi, taking them will not be mandatory. Dobbs has said he does not anticipate a state mandate requiring the vaccination, but private companies could require them as a condition of employment.

On Monday, some long-term care facilities in the state also began vaccinating their staff and residents, he said.

“The vaccines won’t be in arms immediately, but we have gotten word from our (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) partners that we have enough to kick it off,” Dobbs said.

Byers added that once more allotments make it to the state, there will be enough doses to vaccinate every staff member and resident in those facilities across Mississippi.

A vaccine from Massachusetts-based Moderna is set to be reviewed for emergency use authorization by the FDA on Thursday. Byers said the health department currently estimates it will receive 50,000 doses of that vaccine when it is approved, but those numbers are not yet finalized.

Once more doses are available in the state, some healthcare workers will be able to receive vaccinations through drive-thru locations already being used for testing. Jim Craig, the senior deputy and director of the health department’s office of health protection, said this may begin in January.

This is the second time this year that the Cathedral has marked the ever-growing death toll from COVID-19 in the United States.

In September, the Cathedral tolled its bell 200 times after the United States crossed a grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from the virus.

In a written statement, the Cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, said he had grown weary of tolling this bell. “God forgives us if we find ourselves tolling this bell again at 400,000 lives lost,” he wrote in his statement.

The U.S. added nearly 200,000 newly reported Covid-19 cases, and set a record for hospitalizations for the 10th day in a row, as the rollout of one vaccine expanded across the country and another looked set for approval.

The nation reported more than 198,000 new cases for Tuesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, up from Monday’s 192,805 but down from the record 233,133 reported for Friday. It was also lower than the 219,772 cases reported a week earlier on Dec. 8.

The number of cases reported each day tends to be lower at the beginning of the week and rise toward the end of the week, as fewer people are tested over the weekend.

There were 112,816 people hospitalized with the disease on Tuesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, the 10th record-high day in a row. That included a record-high 21,897 in intensive care.

Also on Tuesday, more U.S. hospitals began receiving shipments of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. Pfizer and logistics companies continued distribution of the two-dose vaccine, as they worked to meet the government’s goal of distributing millions of doses to 636 sites across the country by Wednesday. About 2.9 million doses are set to be delivered by the end of the weekend to more than 1,000 locations.

In addition, the Food and Drug Administration said the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Moderna is “highly effective,” suggesting the vaccine could soon be added to the arsenal against the pandemic. The findings from Moderna and the FDA will go before an independent panel on Thursday. The second major U.S. coronavirus vaccine could be shipped by this weekend.

While vaccines are rolled out, states continue to grapple with rising numbers of patients and fatalities. California, which has logged more than 1.65 million cases in total, the most of any state, reported 33,249 for Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins data. It reported its second-highest number of deaths in a day, with 276, just lower than the record-high 278 deaths reported for Aug. 14,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that the state was preparing for a surge in deaths. Among other measures, Mr. Newsom said the state has stockpiled 5,000 more body bags, stationed 60 refrigerated storage containers, and activated a mutual aid system for the county coroners.

Nationwide, more than 16.7 million people have been infected and 303,849 have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. Globally, more than 73.5 million have been infected and more than 1.63 million have died.