KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — The United States has administered about 500,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses daily in the past three days, a significant pickup in pace to meet vaccination targets.
Bloomberg reported that the US federal government’s “Operation Warp Speed” had failed to meet its target to vaccinate 20 million people in the country by the end of December 2020. However, top American infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci projected the Covid-19 immunisation campaign to be fully on track within a week or so.
Operation Warp Speed had aimed to produce and deliver 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the US, including 40 million doses distributed by the end of last December.
However, the US’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that more than 13 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed, but only 4.2 million doses have been consumed so far.
“We are not where we want to be, no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate,” Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was quoted saying.
The Covid-19 vaccination exercise — which has various phases, including allocations to staging and distribution, and carrying out the vaccination process — had strained health agencies in the country.
The US recorded a total of 201,476 new Covid-19 cases on January 3, with more than 350,000 cumulative deaths so far, while Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines had been rolled out in the country.
Dr Fauci affirmed the reliability of the daily reported cases of the country, after president Donald Trump described the reporting as “exaggerating” in his Twitter post yesterday.
Several states in the US, including Florida, are facing huge challenges, such as jammed phone lines, crashed websites, and overcrowded patients in administering the coronavirus vaccines.
It is to be noted that the government had asked states to draw up their own plans to administer Covid-19 vaccine to people.
Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require a total of two doses, where a second or booster shot should be given in less than a month in order to complete the Covid-19 vaccination cycle for a person.
