Residents wait in line to be vaccinated at a mass COVID-19 vaccination center set up in a parking lot outside of the United Center, home to the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, on March 10, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
The United States on Friday topped 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 35 million people have been fully vaccinated, accounting for 13.5% of the adult U.S. population, according to the CDC. Over 65.9 million people have received at least one shot of the two-dose regimens, the CDC said.
The milestone marks the fulfillment of President Joe Biden‘s goal to administer at least 100 million shots within his first 100 days in office.
The administration has slowly accelerated the pace of vaccinations since Biden took office. The White House originally sought to administer one million shots per day, which some public health specialists criticized as a low target. On Friday, according to the CDC, the U.S. administered a record 2.9 million shots.
There are now three Covid-19 vaccines that have received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Moderna and Pfizer‘s two-dose vaccine were authorized for emergency use in December and Johnson & Johnson‘s single-shot vaccine received clearance last month.
The White House has been working with the manufacturers to hasten production and increase the total supply of shots committed to the U.S. On Wednesday, Biden announced that the administration plans to secure an additional 100 million doses of the J&J vaccine.
J&J currently has a deal with the U.S. government to provide 100 million doses by the end of June, though White House officials said this week week that the company will be able to deliver those doses by the end of May. That’s thanks to a deal in which J&J rival Merck will help make doses of the vaccine, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday at a news briefing.
Zients added that Moderna and Pfizer are both expected to deliver 200 million doses, each, of their vaccines by the end of May.
“That is more than enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all adult Americans by the end of May,” Zients said. “Now we need to ramp up the number of vaccinators, as we’ve been talking about, and the number of places where Americans can get vaccinated.”
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