More Americans have been given at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine than have tested positive for the virus as of Monday, Bloomberg reported.
The Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker recorded that 26.5 million Americans had received at least the first dose of one of the vaccines as of Monday, marking a milestone in the vaccine rollout as global cases have fallen. Since the first positive U.S.-based case was detected a year ago, 26.2 million people in the country have tested positive for COVID-19.
Nurses fill syringes with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on February 1, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
The vaccine rollout is the biggest vaccination campaign in history, with an average of 1.35 million people vaccinated in the U.S. per day, a rate faster than any other country in the world, according to Bloomberg.
The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the declining rate of global coronavirus cases, a trend seen across the U.S. as new cases fell for the third consecutive week globally, US News reported. In the U.S., hospitalizations fell below 100,000 for only the second time since early December, although the numbers are still higher than they were during earlier waves, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“While these trends are encouraging, I want to stress that the numbers nationally are still high, and they’re as high as they’ve been at any point in the pandemic up to this point,” Jay Butler, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) deputy director for infectious diseases, said.
President Joe Biden has pledged to meet a goal of administering 100 million shots in the first 100 days of his administration, and arranged to purchase an additional 200 million vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna, which are currently supplying the vaccines available in the U.S. The additional doses would be delivered in the summer. Biden also announced in late January that he expects anyone who wants a vaccine to be able to get one by the spring.
Hundreds of people and medical staff filled the floor as medical staff inoculate the public and first responders against Covid-19 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on February 1, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
World leaders and health experts are concerned about virus variants that have emerged in Brazil, South Africa, and the U.K. A study found that Pfizer’s vaccine protects against the variants from Africa and U.K., although it is slightly less effective. (RELATED: Study Finds Pfizer Vaccine Protects Against Mutations From UK And South Africa With No Need For Additional Vaccine)
Moderna also announced that its vaccine is effective against the new variants that were detected in the U.K. and South Africa, but it is not as protective against the variant found in South Africa.