Coronavirus US: what percentage of the population is already vaccinated?
Ever since the first injection in December 2020, the United States has been ramping up its vaccination programme with President Biden over-achieving his targets.
Back in December a 52-year-old critical care nurse at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Sandra Lindsay,volunteered to become the first person to be vaccinated in the United States. And since then, especially since President Joe Biden took the reigns in January, the nation's covid-19 vaccination programme has been progressing at a rapid pace.
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When was the first confirmed case of covid-19 in the US?
The first reported case of covid-19 infection in North America, according to data released by the World Health Organization (WHO), was on 21 January 2020, when a 35-year-old American citizen in Snohomish County, Washington tested positive for the virus. The man developed symptoms a week after returning home from a trip to the region close to Wuhan where the outbreak is believed to have started.
Since then, there have been 33,1583834 confirmed cases and 590,842 people have died of covid-19-related complications in the US alone. Worldwide, the figures stand at 167,466,013 confirmed cases and 3,476,879 deaths from the virus. (Source: JHU)
Operation Warp Speed was set up by the Trump administration to develop, manufacture, distribute covid-19 vaccines. It was launched way back on 15 May 2020, setting out with the aim of producing and delivering “300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021.”
On 11 December 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the first covid-19 vaccine, developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, for emergency use. The FDA has subsequently approved two other covid-19 vaccines - the Moderna covid-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use a week later on 18 December and late in February the Johnson & Johnson / Janssen vaccine was authorised. The options, with some obstacles along the way, have continued to grow.
At least seven different covid-19 vaccines (three platforms) are currently in use worldwide and so far, over 1.7 billion doses of covid-19 vaccine have been administered in more than 176 countries. The global vaccination campaign is running at about 28.9 million doses per day - up from around 7.1 million just a couple of months ago - with the United States’ vaccine rollout particularly impressive.
According to data issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at the time of writing, 164,378,258 people have received their first covid-19 jab in the US - 49.5% of the population - while 131,078,608 (39.5%) have had their second jab and are now fully vaccinated. Out of those, 67648,415 have received the Pfizer vaccine, 53,115,058 received the Moderna vaccine, 10,260,317 were given the J&J vaccine and 54,818 were given a vaccine which has not been specified by the CDC.
Half of over-18s in the US are fully vaccinated
Half of the adults in the United States, those over the age of 18, are now fully vaccinated. That's more than 129 million people. And the CDC have confirmed that almost the same percentage (49.5%) of the total population have received at least one dose.
President Biden’s team announced on Tuesday that a 'major milestone' had been reached as they continue on the path towards 70% of Americans being fully vaccinated by 4 July.