How many extra doses of coronavirus vaccines has Biden ordered?
President Joe Biden expects that almost all of the US population will be vaccinated by the start of the fall, which would spell the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
Joe Biden has moved swiftly forward with his plan to end the coronavirus pandemic, which will require the vaccination of almost all of the US population – a goal the president says can be reached by the start of the fall.
The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it has put in an order for another 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccines – 100 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 100 million of Moderna’s vaccine.
These 200 million doses would be in addition to the combined 400 million doses the two companies have already committed to the US. Biden said he expects the new purchase order to be confirmed soon, after which it would be delivered over the summer. That will bring the US’s total order of the two vaccines to 600 million doses.
“That’s enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of the summer/start of the fall,” Biden said. “I want to repeat, it will be enough to fully vaccinate 300 million Americans to beat the pandemic."
Biden announces weekly supply surge for states
Biden also announced on that the weekly vaccine distribution to states would increase from 8.6 million doses to 10 million doses from next week.
“This will allow millions of Americans to get vaccinated sooner than previously anticipated,” said the president.
Biden said the government also plans to increase the average number of shots per administered per day to 1.5 million, up from the current figure of 1.27 million.
How many Americans have been vaccinated so far?
According to figures gathered by Bloomberg (at time of writing on 27 November at 15:15 ET), almost 24.5 million vaccine doses have been administered, with 6.2% of the US population having received at least one shot. At least 3.68 million people have completed the two-dose vaccination regimen.
The average number of shots given per day over the past week is 1.27 million. Across the U.S., 7.5 doses have been administered for every 100 people, while 55.2% of the doses sent to states have been used up.
California has so far administered the highest number of shots (2,587,736), followed by Texas (1,917,896), Florida (1,622,421) and New York (1,575,246).