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“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic and it’s an international embarrassment,” Biden said last week

Biden’s recently unveiled executive actions include efforts to restrict weapons known as “ghost guns” that can be built using parts and instructions purchased online.

His announcement came after several high-profile mass shootings rocked the nation, including one at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, that killed 10 people and a shooting rampage in the Atlanta, Georgia, area that killed eight people.

Talks about implementing a federal licensing system gained some traction a couple years ago when New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker introduced the Federal Firearm Licensing Bill, which would have expanded the criteria used to screen prospective gun buyers. Under this plan, attorneys general would have more information about prospective gun owners and could deny licenses to people who violate stalking restraining orders, as well as gun traffickers and people with histories of making threats of violence. Even though the National Rifle Association might try to tell you differently, these are not controversial early steps in a massive gun grab. These are modest expansions of a failing background check system. Unfortunately, this bill died in the Senate.

Even in normal times, mass-vaccination campaigns involve many moving parts within a vast network of suppliers, transporters and middlemen.

Nine other candidates are also in the final stage of testing. If any of those win approval from the F.D.A., that will reduce the importance of Pfizer’s vaccine but also introduce new questions, such as which hospitals and people get the different vaccines.

Pfizer does not yet know where the government wants the vaccine sent or who will be first in line to receive it, said Ms. Alcorn, the supply-chain executive.

“We’re working very closely, in the U.S., in particular, with Operation Warp Speed to identify those distribution points,” Ms. Alcorn said, referring to the federal initiative to produce and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. “We don’t have them today.”

Representatives of UPS and FedEx said they had been planning to play a major role in distributing vaccines and were ready to go.Once the Pfizer coolers reach their destinations, hospitals or pharmacies will have a few choices of how to store the vaccine. The easiest option is using ultracold freezers, but not many sites have them. Otherwise, the facilities can stash the trays in conventional freezers for up to five days. Or they can keep the vials in the cooler for up to 15 days, so long as they replenish the dry ice and don’t open it more than twice a day.

Pfizer has said it expects to be able to produce 50 million doses this year.

“If you’re talking about 12.5 million people, you’re going to have to make some very tough-minded decisions about who this goes to,” said J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research firm. “It’s a pretty small number of doses that are going to be distributed.”

One of the biggest early challenges may be distributing the vaccine in rural areas, which may not be able to administer doses quickly enough before they go bad. It isn’t clear how states with large rural populations are going to deal with this.

For all the difficulties of making and distributing the vaccine, public health experts said the hardest part of the process could soon be complete.

f Pfizer receives authorization for its vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks, as expected, the company in theory could vaccinate millions of Americans by the end of the year, taking advantage of months of planning and decades of experience

So it was cause for celebration this week when Pfizer announced that an early analysis showed its vaccine candidate was more than 90 percent effective.

The effort will hinge on collaboration among a network of companies, federal and state agencies, and on-the-ground health workers in the midst of a pandemic that is spreading faster than ever through the United States.

Before Pfizer can begin shipping its vaccine, federal and state governments must tell it where to send how many doses. McKesson, a major medical supplier, will have to provide hospitals and other distribution sites with the syringes, needles and other supplies necessary to administer the vaccine.

The vaccine, developed with the German company BioNTech, has to be stored at around minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit) until shortly before it is injected

If an analysis planned for next week confirms the vaccine’s safety, the company is likely to ask the F.D.A. this month for emergency authorization to distribute its vaccine. In that case, limited doses will most likely be shipped to large hospitals and pharmacies to be provided to health care workers and other vulnerable groups.

Then there is the thorny question of who will receive vaccines first. That will be up to state governments.

The chief executives of Pfizer and BioNTech have suggested that half of those may go to the United States. Since each person needs two doses, about 12.5 million Americans could be vaccinated.