PRESIDENT Joe Biden said the United States has now purchased enough doses of the Covid vaccine to get the shots to ‘all Americans.’
Biden announced today that the country had purchased another 200million doses of the vaccine, enough for every American adult to get the two-dose requirement.
“We’ve now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans,” the president said.
Biden announced at the National Institutes of Health that that the country had purchased 100million doses each from Pfizer and Moderna — and also said that both companies had agreed to speed up production.
“In further good news, both companies agreed, and are now contractually obligated, to expedite the delivery of 100 million doses that were promised by the end of June to deliver them by the end of May.”
To date, about 46.3million vaccines have been administered in the US, and about 11.1million people have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
The adult population of the US currently sits at more than 209,000million, and the country has a population of more than 330,000 people in total.
The lag is vaccine distribution has been due, at least in part, to supply and demand issues in many states.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told TODAY on Thursday that he expects vaccine distribution to pick up drastically in the month of March, and said it will likely be “open season” for anyone who wants to get vaccinated by April.
The positive vaccine news comes as the US continues to grapple with massive Covid case loads.
Although new case numbers have gone down after a massive spike following the holiday season, January was declared the deadliest month of the pandemic so far.
More than 95,000 people died in the US during January alone, a shocking number that trumped December’s 77,486.
To date, more than 27.4million Americans have been diagnosed with Covid, and more than 473,000 have died.
