CDC says 9 million Americans have now been vaccinated while the United States is fighting

(Reuters) – Nearly nine million Americans were given the first dose of COVID-19 vaccination as of Monday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. states were rushing to intensify inoculations that have not yet slowed the roaring pandemic.

According to the CDC, the 8,987,322 people who have received the first of the two shots represent less than a third of the 25 million total doses distributed to states by the U.S. government.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday asked the Trump administration for permission to directly purchase 100,000 doses of the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE, which was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to for emergency use.

The FDA has also approved a vaccine made by Moderna Inc.

“We remain prepared to speed up distribution to get gun doses,” Whitmer, a first-term Democrat, said in a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters the city could run out of doses of vaccine if the federal government does not send more. It has pledged to inoculate 1 million New Yorkers by the end of January.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is considering releasing more doses of vaccine to states than the federal government had stored in an effort to ensure sufficient supply for the second dose needed. Biden takes office on January 20.

The second shots of the two authorized vaccines are prescribed for three to four weeks after the first.

Public health experts have said no U.S. state, including New York, has so far come close to using its federal vaccine allocations, a much slower-than-expected deployment, partly to blame for rules. rigid that abruptly limit who can be inoculated.

Vaccinations have yet to do anything in the health crisis, as the pandemic claimed an average of some 3,200 lives across the country each day over the past week. COVID-19 has killed more than 374,000 people in the United States since March.

In recent days, states have added vaccination capacity with the ad hoc conversion of sports centers, convention halls and empty schools into vaccination centers.

DODGER STADIUM BECOMES A PLACE OF TOO VACCINATION

The last day of testing for the virus was held Monday at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which will become a mass vaccination site over the weekend, according to local leaders.

Los Angeles County, with a population of about 10 million people, has been the epicenter of the latest pandemic surge in the United States, with cases and deaths rising since early November and many hospitals overwhelmed.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday at a news conference that more than 8,000 hospitalizations were located on Jan. 8, an increase of 884 percent in early November.

“This deadly virus continues to spread at alarming rates … We fully expect to see another increase now that we are almost two weeks away from the New Year holidays,” Ferrer said.

Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo waived his demand that a vaccine be offered to all health workers before other groups are eligible, leading to the waste of hundreds of doses, as the half-finished roads were discarded at the end of each day.

Since then, he has said that certain groups of other essential workers and people over the age of 75 from Monday can make appointments to receive a shot.

There are now more than 4 million people in New York State eligible to get the vaccine from a population of about 19 million, Cuomo said Monday in his annual speech on the state of New York State. state, but there are only a million doses on hand.

“We only receive 300,000 doses a week from the federal government,” he said. “At this rate, it will take us 14 weeks to receive enough doses for those currently eligible.”

To date, New York has recorded nearly 40,000 COVID-19-related deaths, most from all states in the United States. About 30,000 people have died in California, the nation’s most populous state.

Texas and Florida have been vaccinating people over the age of 65 since late December, although reports from those states indicate that demand has far exceeded appointments.