Top U.S. infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci will get vaccinated on live TV on Dec. 22 with Moderna Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine — a product the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases helped develop and bring to Americans in the nation's fight against the pandemic.

Fauci's boss, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, will also take the shot, as will a number of healthcare workers at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will also be getting the shot at NIH's Dec. 22 televised event. Azar has opted not to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to quarantine after his wife tested positive for COVID-19. He is claiming "essential worker" status and has attended briefings and photo-op events in recent days.

Fauci and his scientists started development with Moderna on a COVID-19 vaccine in mid-January under a longtime partnership pursuing products based on a messenger RNA platform — research that was initially funded by the Obama administration.

The NIH immunizations with Moderna's COVID-19 shots follow the Dec. 21 public vaccination of President-elect Joe Biden, who received Pfizer Inc.'s vaccine — a product the company co-developed with BioNTech SE.

Pfizer and BioNTech received emergency use authorization, or EUA, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11. On Dec. 18, the agency granted an EUA to Moderna.

"We owe these folks an awful lot — the scientists and the people who put this together, the frontline workers, the people who were the ones who actually did the clinical work," Biden said after receiving the first of his two-dose series of shots at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. "It's just amazing." He is expected to return three weeks later for the second shot.

Biden said he got vaccinated on live TV to "demonstrate that people should be prepared when it's available to take the vaccine. There's nothing to worry about."

Biden acknowledged it is "going to take time" before all Americans can have access to the COVID-19 vaccines — a program he will inherit when he enters the White House on Jan. 20, 2021.

Until they can get the vaccine, Americans must listen to public health experts and take the proper steps to avoid getting and spreading COVID-19, like wearing masks and not traveling, Biden said.

"We're still in the thick of this," he said.

The White House has provided no timeline for vaccinating President Donald Trump and he has not committed to getting the shot on live TV. Fauci has said Trump should get the vaccine.

Maryland provides shots to NIH

The NIH received 100 doses of the Moderna vaccine under the U.S. government's contract, in which taxpayers paid $1.53 billion for 100 million doses of the product. The U.S. triggered part of the option for additional doses of Moderna's vaccine — securing another 100 million of the shots.

The NIH said it expects to receive a "sizeable shipment" of Moderna's vaccine from Maryland next week for the clinical center's top tier frontline healthcare workers.

Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, confirmed in a Dec. 21 statement that the NIH would be getting 2,300 doses from the state's initial allotment of the Moderna vaccine.

"Maryland is proud to be home to some of the world's leading health systems and medical research institutions, including NIH," Hogan stated.

The Maryland governor thanked Collins, Fauci and their teams for "all they have done throughout this crisis to save lives."

Vaccination funding

About 8 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are being shipped this week to nearly 4,000 locations around the U.S., officials said Dec. 21 — reiterating remarks Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer for the White House's Operation Warp Speed project, made two days earlier.

The $900 billion pandemic relief package that cleared the House and Senate on Dec. 21 included nearly $9 billion for COVID-19 vaccination programs run by federal, state, local, territorial and tribal public health agencies — the amount the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials said in October would be needed.

HHS' Azar had earlier pushed back against seeking additional funding, insisting local jurisdictions had sufficient resources, despite state leaders arguing to the contrary.

Lawmakers also included nearly $20 billion in the stimulus package for the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support manufacturing and procurement of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

Variant strain

During a Dec. 21 briefing, U.S. officials said there is no evidence a variant strain of COVID-19 that has been circulating in the U.K. — with a steep increase in cases in recent weeks — is more deadly.

While there was "clear evidence" there is more of the variant strain in the U.K., it is not yet known if it is because it is more transmissible or because scientists are now looking for it, Moncef Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed's chief scientific adviser, told reporters.

"It may be just seeding happened in the shadows and we're seeing now a surge," Slaoui said.

He said there is no evidence the variant strain is more pathogenic and results in more morbidity or mortality.

Researchers in the U.K. and at the NIH are studying the strain.

Slaoui said he did not anticipate the variant strain would become resistant to the COVID-19 vaccines.

"This will not be a problem," he said.

While it may take years and more mutations before resistance develops against the COVID-19 vaccines, there remain many unknowns about the variant strain, said Muge Cevik, an infectious diseases scientist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

"We don't know if it will influence the severity of illness, reinfection, effectiveness of vaccines and treatments," she tweeted Dec. 21. "So, there's still a lot of work to be done, including lab experiments, contact tracing studies and genomic surveillance."