US Surgeon General Jerome Adams called the rollout Monday of the nation’s first Covid-19 vaccine “tremendous.”
“This is just tremendous and I’m smiling bigger than I’ve smiled in a long time because it has been a hard year for so many people out there, including me personally,” Adams told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“Today we really did get a shot of hope,” he added.
Adams was at George Washington University Medical Center Monday as frontline health care workers got the vaccination.
“We’re not talking about development. We’re not talking about the approval process — actual vaccines going into arms,” Adams said.
But he cautioned that there’s still a long road ahead: “We’ve got a long way to go, make no mistake about it, and we still need to be appropriately cautious,” Adams said.
“We still need to understand how severe this virus is and the surge that is going in the wrong direction, but we’ve got some hope finally,” he added.
All 50 states, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico have now received their first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, according to statements from the state departments of health, governor’s offices and local hospitals.
Watch the moment: