President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that all adults in the United States will be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine by May 1. “All adult Americans will be eligible to receive the vaccine by May 1,” said Biden. “This is much earlier than expected.”
Biden clarified that adults will not all be able to get vaccinated immediately, but at least they will be able to get in line. Still, he said the country will have enough vaccine supplies for all adults by the end of May – a statement he made earlier.
It is a goal that, as Biden said, would have seemed unfeasible just a few months ago. But there are good reasons to believe that it is now absolutely possible.
As of Thursday, the United States had given at least one dose of the vaccine to 64 million people, with 33 million fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States currently administers about 2.2 million doses of the vaccine per day.
Even if that rate does not improve at all, the US could fully vaccinate more than 140 million Americans by May 1. That is more than half of the approximately 260 million adults in the USA today. Therefore, even before Biden’s promised date, most adults in America will be vaccinated.
There are also good reasons to think that the rate will increase. By the end of this month, pharmaceutical companies indicated they will produce and ship more than 3 million vaccines a day. If states manage to convert these doses into vaccines as soon as they receive them, the United States will be able to vaccinate more than 165 million Americans before May – about two-thirds of American adults.
And the vaccination rate can easily increase above that, as the supply continues to increase over the next month and a half.
In other words, Biden’s promise may begin at a time when only a third of US adults still need to be vaccinated, while the country is likely to be delivering vaccines at a rate of 3 million doses per day, if not more. At that point, the math just fits: the remaining 95 million adults in America could really be covered within a month. The only obstacle, if all goes well, is to make an appointment.
This does not mean that the United States is destined to do all of this without any problems. Pharmaceutical companies may not be able to deliver on what they promised. Perhaps cities, states and the feds do not overcome all logistical obstacles to obtaining shots. Maybe something else will break down in a very complicated supply chain.
And with the increase in supply, vaccine hesitation is likely to become a bigger problem, as more adults simply refuse the vaccine. Overcoming this – to continue increasing the national vaccination rate – will require creative education and awareness campaigns, focused on local pockets of resistance. This will pose its own logistical challenges.
But at least all of this seems possible. That was not the case when Biden took office, while the vaccine implantation in the country faced difficulties and less than 1 million Americans received an injection a day. At that time, it was not clear whether we could vaccinate all American adults by the end of the year. Now it looks like America could finish the job in just a few months.