#US administers 100 mn COVID shots: official data

Health workers in the United States have administered more than 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, an official tracker showed Friday, around 30 percent of the world’s total of shots in arms so far.

A total of 101,128,005 shots have been administered, according to the latest tally posted Friday afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Joe Biden’s administration had initially targeted achieving this milestone by his hundredth day in office, that is, April 30.

But the goal was quickly revised up to 150 million shots in the first 100 days, and this week Biden said there will be enough vaccine to cover the whole adult population of 258 million by the end of May.

In terms of the breakdown, 65.9 million people have received at least one dose while 35 million are now fully vaccinated, or 10.5 percent of the total population of 331 million.

Sixty-one percent of those over 65 years old, the group most susceptible to severe COVID-19, have received at least one dose.

Some fifty million doses of the Pfizer shot have been administered, 49 million of Moderna’s, 900,000 of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine, and a further 100,000 that haven’t been identified.

More than 340 million doses of COVID vaccines have been administered worldwide, according to an AFP tally.

The US therefore accounts for almost 30 percent of those despite making up just over four percent of the world population.

Also Friday, the administration announced that new personnel such as dentists, veterinarians and health care students will be recruited to the inoculation campaign nationwide.

“The Department of Health and Human Services will launch a new portal to help individuals determine where they can sign up to volunteer to administer shots,” Marcella Nunez-Smith, who leads the administration’s health equity task force, told reporters.

The administration previously authorized any physician or most classes of nurse, either active or retired in the past five years, to administer the shots.

The United States is currently administering around 2.2 million shots per day.

The state of Michigan said Friday it wanted to drop eligibility requirements for vaccines by April 5, effectively ushering in “open season” for all adults.

Alaska became the first state to eliminate priority groups on Tuesday.

In addition to the three vaccines already authorized, AstraZeneca and Novavax are also carrying out late stage US clinical trials for their vaccines.

These could also be authorized if they perform comparably to those already being distributed, and are still required.

© 2021 AFP