Trucks leave to distribute virus vaccine around US

The first trucks carrying a COVID-19 vaccine for widespread use in the United States pulled out of a Michigan manufacturing plant on Sunday, with the shots that are critical to stopping the nation's coronavirus outbreak destined to reach states a day later.An assembly line of workers began in the early morning hours pulling doses out of a freezer, boxing the vaccine and loading the units onto pallets so they could be placed on trucks at a Pfizer plant in Michigan.

One forklift driver transported the boxes to a loading area where a second forklift driver transferred the pallets from inside the facility onto a semitruck. Shipments of the Pfizer vaccine will set in motion the biggest vaccination effort in American history at a critical juncture of the pandemic that has killed 1.6 million and sickened 71 million worldwide.

Initially, about 3 million doses were expected to be sent out, and the priority is health care workers and nursing home residents as infections, hospitalizations and deaths soar in the US.With numbers likely to get worse over the holidays, the vaccine is offering a bright spot in the fight against the pandemic that's killed nearly 300,000 Americans.

(Image Credit: AP)