By Jared S. Hopkins

More U.S. hospitals on Tuesday began receiving shipments of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, with doctors and nurses being inoculated for the first time.

Pfizer and logistics companies continued distribution of its two-dose vaccine, as they worked to meet the government's goal of distributing millions of doses to 636 sites across the country by Wednesday. About 2.9 million doses are set to be delivered by the end of the weekend to more than 1,000 locations.

At Loretto Hospital in Chicago, five health-care workers received the city's first vaccines on Tuesday with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and other officials watching nearby. "What we just witnessed is history in the making," Ms. Lightfoot said afterward at a press briefing. "I got goosebumps watching this happen."

Loretto has fewer than 200 beds in the city's Austin neighborhood, a predominantly African-American community that has been especially hard hit by the virus. "Covid-19 is still real. It is still killing Chicagoans. We need to stay vigilant," Ms. Lightfoot said.

Five people got the vaccine as a way to illustrate the complex logistics involved in the vaccine rollout, as Pfizer's shot comes five-per-vial, said Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady. Pfizer's shot is transported frozen, can be refrigerated for up to five days but then must be administered within a few hours.

"These folks are the lucky ones to get us started," said Dr. Arwady.

Public-health officials and health authorities have been counting on a vaccine's arrival to help bring an end to the pandemic, as the death toll surpassed 300,000 in the U.S. on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths over a seven-day period has grown from 824 on Nov. 1 to over 2,400 as of Sunday, prompting new restrictions by many states in an attempt to slow the spread.

William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said it is crucial to inoculate doctors and nurses treating Covid-19 subjects.

"We need to protect that workforce," he said "We don't want them to either be absent from work or become really sick, or for that matter, dying."

The first vaccine in New Jersey was given to Maritza Beniquez, an emergency department nurse, at University Hospital's Vaccine Clinic at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, according to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's office. Six acute-care hospitals are set to receive the state's initial federally determined 76,050 doses of the vaccine this week.

An additional 47 New Jersey hospitals are expected to begin administering vaccinations by the end of the week.

"I won't have to be afraid to go into a room anymore," Ms. Beniquez, 56 years old, said at a news conference. "I won't have to be afraid to perform chest compressions or to be present when they are intubating a patient and giving a breathing treatment that is necessary."

The Minneapolis VA Medical Center gave out its first doses of the vaccine Tuesday, according to medical center director Patrick Kelly.

The facility is one of the first 37 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical sites to get initial doses of the vaccine because of the hospital's ability to vaccinate large numbers of people and store the shots at ultracold temperatures, according to spokesman Brad Doboszenski.

"The vaccine is not waiting to go, the vaccines are being given in Minnesota," said Gov. Tim Walz, who spoke at the medical center.

Under the VA's plan, the first in line will be those who live in long-term care facilities, akin to nursing homes, and VA health care workers, according to the department.

The VA has said it plans to provide a Covid vaccine free of charge to veterans who receive VA health care.

The Trump administration and officials with President-elect Joe Biden have said the vaccine would be provided free of charge to Americans. Administration fees would be billed to private or government insurance plans or to a special government relief fund for the uninsured.

While California began vaccinations at one hospital in Los Angeles on Monday and another in San Francisco on Tuesday, logistical problems with a computer system meant to track people who get vaccinated arose in the state's most populous metro area.

In L.A. County, a patient registration and tracking system called PrepMod that public-health officials are requiring facilities to use has experienced delays and isn't yet fully online, said Jeff Smith, chief operating officer of Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

"Cedars-Sinai and some other large hospital systems have decided to leverage our existing electronic health records instead of the county system to perform those functions," said Dr. Smith. He said the county is "establishing workarounds until their system is up and running."

L.A. County spokesmen referred questions about the system to state public health officials, who didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

San Francisco gave out its first round of vaccinations on Tuesday, city officials said, with doctors and other health-care workers receiving shots at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. The first shot went to Dr. Antonio Gomez, the hospital's medical director of critical-care services.

Most of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, is currently under one of the strictest lockdowns in the nation as case counts and deaths have surged in recent weeks. The state's 14-day average test positivity rate is 10.6%, compared with 4.4% one month ago.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is on track to administer doses of the vaccine to 2.1 million residents by the end of this year, while warning the state still faces a serious public health threat for months to come.

California has received the first 33,000 doses of its initial allotment of 327,600 doses of the vaccine, with tens of thousands more arriving over the next several days, Gov. Newsom said.

A second vaccine, from Moderna Inc., could be authorized this week and shipped by the weekend. The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine is "highly effective" after conducting an analysis of the company's trial data.

The findings from the FDA, along with a companion analysis from the company, will go before an independent panel Thursday. The vaccine uses a similar gene-based technology as Pfizer's vaccine.

Pfizer shipped vaccine vials out Sunday, and hospitals and health departments across the country from Alaska to Michigan and Texas to Florida began receiving them early Monday.

Some began injecting patients immediately, while others needed some time for logistics such as dispersing the vials and training staff.

Millions of Americans, including some health-care workers, aren't sure whether they will take a Covid-19 shot. The U.S. government says this week it is starting a reworked education plan, while academic researchers and community groups are also trying to improve vaccine acceptance among ethnic and minority groups and other populations.

Heidi Kukla, an intensive care nurse who took the first shot in New Hampshire at Elliot Hospital, said she volunteered to be first to get the vaccine -- and to do it publicly -- to try to ease the concerns others have about it, she said.

"They're worried about how fast it was produced, what the long-term effects may be," she said. "But I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing worse than being a patient on a ventilator in an ICU anywhere in this country right now, with Covid, and the anguish of the family members that can't be there."

With limited supplies, hospitals are having to devise rationing methods, navigating ethical, legal and practical challenges of coordinating a mass vaccination campaign among employees as shots become available.

Pfizer has said 25 million doses will be available in the U.S. by the end of the month.

Medical staff have been advised to monitor patients who receive the vaccine for at least 15 minutes to make sure they don't have adverse reactions. Two people who received the Pfizer vaccine in the U.K. last week had severe allergic reactions. The additional time required for monitoring and some logistical hiccups have slowed the vaccine rollout in that country.

Federal officials expect about 100 million Americans to be immunized against Covid-19 by February or March. The general public could be inoculated in the spring or summer.

The FDA authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday last week, citing its 95% effectiveness at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in a large clinical trial. On Saturday, an advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to recommend that the vaccine be used for people 16 years and older.

Long-term care facilities for the elderly are scheduled to begin receiving vaccinations next week through a federal partnership with drugstore chains CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. But a few staffers and residents around the country are getting their shots this week.

--Joe Barrett, Jim Carlton, Joseph De Avila Ben Kesling, Alejandro Lazo, Christine Mai-Duc and Anna Wilde Matthews contributed to this article.

Write to Jared S. Hopkins at jared.hopkins@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

12-15-20 1703ET