WASHINGTON/OTTAWA/GENEVA • The United States health authorities will hold an emergency meeting this week to recommend that a coronavirus vaccine awaiting approval be given first to healthcare professionals and people in long-term care facilities.

The meeting, announced on Friday by a US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) committee on immunisations, suggests that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may be close to authorising distribution of the long-awaited vaccine, at least to those considered most vulnerable.

United Airlines has begun moving shipments of the vaccine, developed by Pfizer, on charter flights to ensure that it can be quickly distributed once it is approved, said a person familiar with the matter.

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices will vote on Tuesday to recommend that the FDA allow healthcare professionals and long-term care facilities to be the first two groups to get initial vaccine supplies, a CDC spokesman said.

A green light for any vaccine would come as welcome news to Americans, who political leaders have clamped under increasingly aggressive measures to curtail the spread of the virus.

In Canada, which is in the middle of a second wave of the virus, officials said they could start approving the various candidate vaccines in December and distribute doses in the first quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has said that it needs to see clinical data and information of good manufacturing practice to be able to evaluate Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.

The Sputnik V vaccine is more than 90 per cent effective, a representative of the Russian health ministry said this month, citing data collated from vaccinations of the public rather than from an ongoing trial.

REUTERS