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When one or more coronavirus vaccines receives FDA emergency use authorization, it will launch a public health and logistics initiative unlike any in U.S. history. Hundreds of millions of doses will have to distributed nationwide and kept cold until healthcare professionals can administer not one, but two doses to each person. And enough skeptical members of the population will have to be persuaded to receive the vaccine to slow virus transmission.

The multiple announcements of potential vaccine candidates in the fight against COVID-19 has been greeted positively around the world, but rolling out immunization to every Canadian who needs and wants it will be a bigger challenge than many campaigns of the past. And it all starts with having to keep things cold as ice — and then some — for far longer than with vaccines such as the flu shot.

The mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna and vetted in clinical trials at the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System is based on the same technology used by Pfizer to develop its vaccine candidate, but would not have the same requirement for storage at ultra-cold temperatures. Pfizer and Moderna are the first companies to release partial results from Phase 3 clinical trials in the race to develop a vaccine against the deadly SARS-CoV-3 virus that causes COVID-19.

The U.S. recorded more than 1 million cases of COVID-19 in the last seven days, Johns Hopkins University data shows, which is more than any other week since the pandemic began. There are 80,000 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 and over 15,000 of these individuals are currently in intensive care units (ICUs) with nearly 5,000 on ventilators. These numbers are prodigious and make it clear to experts in the medical field that catastrophe in the health care world is not imminent — it has arrived.

Due to the extremely high virus activity level in Wisconsin, experts say there's no completely safe way to celebrate Thanksgiving with people who live outside your home. "Whenever you have so many people that are carrying the virus, then even small gatherings are a risk," Dr. Oguz Alagoz, who models infectious diseases at UW-Madison, said. That risk exists even at gatherings of close family if they aren't part of the same household. "We have so many people that are already carrying this virus, so it's very likely that one of your loved ones, knowingly or unknowingly, could transmit," he said.