When the Northern Marianas ultimately gets a Covid-19 vaccine health officials have outlined their plan to have it distributed in three phases.
Vaccine testing is underway across the globe Photo: AFP
The Commonwealth Health Coporation Chief Executive, Esther Muña, said first it would go to healthcare workers and others in the frontline against the coronavirus.
Then the most vulnerable and children, and lastly everyone else.
Meanwhile Governor Ralph Torres gave a toast to the "great role" the CNMI's nurses had been playing in the islands' fight against the pandemic.
In doing so he said his administration was doing everything it could to retain 18 healthcare workers whose work visas recently expired.
Torres asked the US Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia, to quickly process the petitions of those key workers whose Transitional Worker permits had lapsed.
The CHCC was also looking at other visa options for the healthcare workers, including as a stop-gap measure, tourist visas so they could stay in the CNMI for six months.