The U.S. is currently administering a mean of 2.2 million doses each day, and that pace will probably accelerate since the speed of vaccine production increases and much more vaccines become cleared for use, according to the AP. “I’m proud to announce that tomorrow, 58 days into our government, we will have fulfilled our goal,” President Joe Biden said at a press conference on March 18, the Associated Press (AP) reported. According to NPR. Along with declaring the 100 million dose milestone, the White House shared details of a new plan to provide 4 million doses of this two-dose AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the AP reported. Two-and-a-half a million doses of this vaccine will be transmitted to Mexico along the rest 1.5 million will visit Canada.
Given that many of those vaccines cleared for emergency usage need two doses, not everybody who’s obtained a shot is completely vaccinated yet. The vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna equally need two doses, given several weeks apart, while the recently approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine just requires one injection. In general, over 115 million total vaccine doses are administered since U.S residents began receiving injections in December 2020, based on Politifact.
The AstraZeneca shot has not yet been authorized for emergency use in the U.S. however, but the nation has already stockpiled thousands of doses, in anticipation of their forthcoming clearance. “Today, 65 percent of people aged 65 or older have received a minimum of one shot, and 36% are fully vaccinated,” Biden noted in his March 18 address. “And that is key — because this is a population which represents 80% of the well over 500,000 COVID-19 deaths that have happened in the USA.”
