NEW YORK, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer is expected to arrive in New York City as early as Dec. 15 and that by Moderna as early as Dec. 22, tweeted Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday.

"Priority will be given to frontline medical workers and nursing homes," he emphasized.

"A vaccine is on the horizon. Don't give up now. We HAVE to work together to keep these numbers down," he said earlier Wednesday, adding that NYC's COVID-19 infection rate on a seven-day average went down to 4.81 percent, compared with 4.94 percent one day earlier.

Also on Wednesday, the mayor vowed during his press conference not to let people of privilege "jump the line" and get vaccinated ahead of priority groups like people in nursing homes, health care workers and first responders.

"Their time will come," he said. "We've got to protect those who serve us and those who are most vulnerable, and we will enforce that rigorously."

On Tuesday, a panel meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided that health care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities will be the first groups to receive COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.

More than 240,000 health care workers have been infected with COVID-19 and 858 have died, according to the CDC.

The meeting came a day after American drugmaker Moderna submitted an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of its vaccine candidate mRNA-1273.

Another vaccine candidate from American company Pfizer and German drugmaker BioNtech, applied for EUA on Nov. 20.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said on Monday the first two COVID-19 vaccines could be available to Americans before Christmas.

As of Tuesday afternoon, coronavirus deaths added up to 24,416 and confirmed cases to 337,232 in NYC, according to The City, a project that tracks the spread of confirmed COVID-19 infections and fatalities in New York City, based on information provided by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the governor's office, The COVID Tracking Project and the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.