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WASHINGTON -- Vice President Mike Pence and the leaders of the House and Senate received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday as they tried to reassure the American public that the shot is safe. Pence, in a live-television event, celebrated the milestone as "a medical miracle" that could eventually put an end to a raging pandemic that has killed more than 310,000 people nationwide.
Conspicuously absent: President Donald Trump, who has remained largely out of sight five days into the largest vaccination campaign in the nation's history.
"I didn't feel a thing. Well done," Pence told the technicians from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday morning as he became the highest-ranking U.S. official to receive the Pfizer-
BioNTech shot, the first authorized in the U.S.
Later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, tweeted photos of themselves receiving the vaccine from the Capitol physician, who urged all members of Congress to join them.
The public displays come as top U.S. health officials are trying to persuade regular Americans to get the vaccinations.