Washington, Dec 10 (AP) The Pentagon's initial allotment of coronavirus vaccine will be administered at 16 defence sites in the United States and abroad, with health care workers, emergency service personnel and residents of military retirement homes getting top priority, officials here said.

Next in line, once follow-on supplies of vaccine becomes available, will be military personnel who provide “critical national capabilities,” such as nuclear weapons crews and cybersecurity forces, as well as certain military units getting ready to deploy.

Also Read | Barack Obama Did Not Snub PM Narendra Modi on Twitter Over Farmers’ Protest; Fact-Check Debunks Fake News Spread Through Morphed Image.

The vaccinations will be voluntary because the Pfizer vaccine initially is to be made available on an emergency use basis. The shots could become mandatory later if vaccines are fully licenced by the Food and Drug Administration, the officials said on Wednesday.

A few dozen of the Pentagon's leaders, including the acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are to be among those receiving early vaccinations, said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.

Also Read | Turkey Refuses to Buy Russian COVID-19 Vaccine Citing ‘Lack of Good Practice’, Kremlin Reacts.

Some of those leaders will get their shots in public in order to demonstrate the Pentagon's confidence in the vaccine's safety, he said.

The Pentagon is to received slightly fewer than 44,000 doses of the vaccine initially, he said. The timing depends on when the FDA gives the go-ahead for distribution and use of the Pfizer vaccine.

In their first evaluation of the Pfizer vaccine, FDA scientists this week confirmed that it offers strong protection, setting the stage for the government to green light the biggest vaccination effort in the nation's history.

The FDA's independent advisers were to meet on Thursday to debate whether evidence was strong enough to recommend vaccinating millions of Americans. A final FDA decision and the first shots could follow within days.

Thomas McCaffery, the assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, told a Pentagon news conference that although vaccinations will be voluntary, at least initially, he strongly recommends that all who are offered the shot take it. The first doses are to be ready for use within a day or two of the FDA go-ahead, he said.

“Our advice to everyone is to take the vaccine, just based on risk," said Lt. Gen. Ronald Place, director of the Defence Health Agency.

The initial set of 43,875 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are to be provided in varying quantities at 16 locations, with distribution to be vastly expanded later to reach all military members and Defense Department civilians when more doses become available.

The initial 16 sites are:

—Darnall Army Medical Centre at Fort Hood, Texas.

—Wilford Hall at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

—Madigan Army Medical Centre at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington.

—Womack Army Medical Centre at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

—Navy Branch Health Clinic at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida.

—Base Alameda Health Services at the Coast Guard Base at Alameda, California.

—Naval Medical Centre at San Diego (which also will distribute doses to the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, California).

—Naval Hospital Pensacola, at Pensacola, Florida (which will distribute to the Armed Forces Retirement Home at Gulfport, Mississippi).

—Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre at Bethesda, Maryland (which will distribute to the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C).

—Portsmouth Naval Medical Center at Portsmouth, Virginia (which will distribute to the Coast Guard Base Clinic at Portsmouth).

—Indiana National Guard at Franklin, Indiana.

—The New York National Guard Medical Command at Watervliet, New York.

Doses from the initial Pfizer batch of vaccine also will be administered at Tripler Army Medical Centre in Honolulu and at three overseas locations: Allgood Army Community Hospital at Camp Humphreys in South Korea; Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany, and Kadena Medical Facility at Kadena air base in Japan. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)