bedelia, to you as we get specifics on that. we know the millions of doses going out this week will be prioritized for health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities, and we have robert who writes, i'm 80 years old with comorbidity issues like copd and cancer issues. how will i gnotified when and where i can get my first vaccine? >> great question, robert. what we know from the advisory of practices, the first phase, dr. gounder says it is health care workers and long-term care workers, but then it will be the essential workers or patients who are over 65 who might have co mo comorbidities who might have access. really, we're not talking until february or march authorize who might have access to that. the states will notify the facilities who will be pending this out and you might get notification from your state as well as from your primary care provider or your physician when these are available in your area or what pharmacies in your neighborhood. >> okay. dr. clayborne, this question from kimberly who wants t

bedelia, can you talk about the significance of that moment? have incredible stories. nurse lindsay, you mentioned, sandra lindsay, the first woman, a nurse, and health care worker, to receive this vaccine. as we know, particularly as she said she wanted to serve as an example to help alleviate some of the vaccine hesitancy. we know from a kaiser family foundation survey that african-americans, black americans, 35% of black americans still are hesitant, think they probably or definitely will not take the vaccine. her setting that example is not just beyond brave, but it is america. it is the culmination of this year where we get to roll out these vaccines and have it presented by what america looks like. the other women that sort of stuck out to me i want to draw attention to is dr. maria from w.h.o. the covid-19 face of w.h.o. done an incredible job as technical lead of that team. the other folks are, i cannot leave without giving kudos to dr. kaitlyn kari c co, a researcher who definitely has been working on mrna technology nor 40 years. hard

nahid bedelia, an nbc news and msnbc contributor.the vaccine against the coronavirus. how do you counter the people out there who will inevitably raise todoubts about the safetyf it. >> it will have been tested in tens of thousands of people before it's approved and put out there, which means that we can say with confidence that it doesn't have a relatively uncommon severe side effect. 20,000 people isn't 20 million people, and i think people could reasonably argue that we haven't proven it doesn't have a rare serious side effect. the 1a group, the first tier group as defined by the cdc will be long-term care facility residents and staff, and essential health care workers which is another 21 million people. by the time you get to just other essential workers, much less those over 65, those with high risk medical conditions, this vaccine is already going to have been in tens of billions of people. you're going to have a huge safety portfolio where you can say hopefully it doesn't even cause a rare serious side effect, that it appears

na heed bedelia joining us now, medical director of special pathogens at boston medical center dr., it sounds like you're a very busy woman these days i've got to ask you, we know this mutated strain is in other countries for sure experts say it's probably here in the united states why don't we know that for sure? >> yeah, contessa, great question, and i think you can say the same thing about other countries that haven't yet detected that strain which is to find that strain, what we need to do is to take a percentage of the samples that are diagnosed and do deep genetic nalanalysis and the u.s., our capacity hasn't been spectacular. the cdc released a report that said they had only analyzed 51,000 cases of the then 17 million cases we had had which means that if the strain is here, we might just be missing it because the holes in our net are too wide, but the point here, though, to the travel testing is this is why it's important for us to continue all the public health measures if this strain is more transm s transmissible, a sure way to stop it is to continue the public health measur

ba heed bedelia.sick and hospitalizations breaking records every week. there are more than 101,000 americans currently hospitalized with covid. i think the arrival of the vaccine and the discovery of a vaccine has given people this much needed light at the end of the tunnel. what would have made trump administration officials tell pfizer, no thanks. >> it is hard to know, not having been part of the discussions of course. none of us knew how effective the vaccines were going to be, and operation warp speed strategy has been, pfizer was not part of the initial investment but they did take a supply order from the government. the interesting thing to me now is the other part of the intro you had which is we're potentially seeing delays in the level of supplies in this country, and that's concerning because, you know, what we're hearing is that there are two types of issues that they're facing, factoring. what moderna says they want to ensure they had delays. e they want to ensure components making the va