Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
The U.S. has administered 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, a White House official said Friday.
Just under 40% of Americans have had at least one dose and about a quarter have completed one- and two-dose vaccines. The news was announced on Twitter from Cyrus Shahpar, the White House Covid-19 data director.
The deployment of vaccines has been accelerating as supply increases, with the U.S. firing about 1% of the population every day, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker. The United States took 89 days to administer the first 100 million doses, a milestone reached on March 12. The second 100 million has arrived in just 36 days.
President Joe Biden has said his goal was to administer 200 million doses in the first 100 days of his administration. Since vaccination began under the Donald Trump administration, another 16.5 million doses will be needed to reach the Biden mark. This should happen a bit next week, about a week before Biden’s deadline.
This goal will be a little harder to achieve due to a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine as health regulators investigates reports of dangerous blood clots. It is unclear when the use of these features will be resumed. This was stated by a group of expert advisers it will take at least another week to study the subject.
The pause in J&J vaccines will not have a significant impact in the short term: the vast majority of doses distributed in the U.S. are shots made by Pfizer Inc. and his German partner BioNTech SE, and per Moderna Inc. But single-dose J&J vaccines are important for long-term U.S. supply, and the fact that they are a single dose makes them easier to use, especially for harder-to-reach populations.
There are also indications that even while the government is in charge of distributing tens of millions of doses a week, supply begins to accumulate in certain places. A handful of states now have more than 30 percent of the doses sent to them still unused, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Part of this growing surplus may represent an expected inefficiency, as vaccines are sent to more places and many of the most enthusiastic people have been shot. But there are also indications in some places, such as Lynchburg, Virginia, that vaccine appointments are not being met, even though a lower-than-average portion of the local population has been vaccinated.