The US government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains kick off a nationwide campaign to vaccinate nursing home residents against Covid-19, a week after the first vaccines authorised in the country began being administered to healthcare workers.

The programme is the latest effort to control a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people in the country and is straining the capacity of healthcare systems in some states, Reuters reported.

The United States has two authorised vaccines against the virus, one developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE, which was cleared for use on December 11, and one by Moderna Inc that was approved on Friday.