President Joe Biden’s administration has vowed to make the COVID-19 available to all adult Americans on or before the end of May 2021.
This is just as the White House House reiterated President Biden’s commitment on Friday to distribute eleven million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine next week.
It said the gesture was in a continued effort to get 200 million jabs in people’s arms in the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration..
Jeff Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters that the United States is still on track to deliver on its goal of making shots available to all adults by the end of May,
J&J had said last month it would deliver 20 million doses of its single-dose inoculation in March. However, shipments were delayed because key U.S. manufacturing partners, including Catalent Inc, did not immediately receive U.S. regulatory clearance to send out doses made in their facilities.
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The White House is also working to speed up the administration of shots by increasing the number of active-duty troops assisting with vaccinations, to more than 6,000 from 2,900, Zients said.
As of Friday, 71% of adults aged 65 and over have received at least one vaccine dose, Zients said.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was deeply concerned about the trajectory of COVID-19 cases in the United States. The country’s seven-day average daily case count is up 7% over last week, to 57,000 daily cases.
“We know from higher surges that if we don’t control things now, there is a real potential for the epidemic curve to soar again,” she said.
Yahoo News
