More Americans received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine than positive tests for the virus on Monday, Bloomberg reported.
The Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker reported that 26.5 million Americans had received at least the first dose of one of the vaccines on Monday, marking a milestone in the launch of the vaccine as global cases declined. Since the first positive case based in the United States was detected a year ago, 26.2 million people in the country have tested positive for COVID-19.
Nurses fill syringes with the Modern Covid-19 vaccine at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on February 1, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP via Getty Images)
The vaccine launch is the largest vaccination campaign in history, with an average of 1.35 million people vaccinated in the US a day, a faster rate than any other country in the world, according to Bloomberg.
The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the decline in the rate of global coronavirus cases, a trend seen across the U.S., as new cases dropped for the third consecutive week in the world, US News reported. In the U.S., hospitalizations have dropped to less than 100,000 for the second time since early December, although the numbers are still higher than during the first waves, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“While these trends are encouraging, I want to emphasize that the numbers nationally are still high and as high as at any point in the pandemic so far,” Jay Butler, Center for Disease Control and Deputy Director of Prevention (CDC) for diseases infectious diseases, he said.
President Joe Biden pledged to meet the goal of administering 100 million shots in the first 100 days of his administration, and arranged purchase 200 million additional doses of vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna, which currently supply the vaccines available in the U.S. The additional doses would be delivered in the summer. Biden too announced in late January, he hopes that anyone who wants a vaccine can get it by spring.
Hundreds of people and medical staff occupied the site as the medical team inoculated the public and first aid against Covid-19 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on February 1, 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP via Getty Images)
World leaders and health experts are concerned about the virus variants that have emerged in Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom. One study found that Pfizer The vaccine protects against variants in Africa and the United Kingdom, although it is somewhat less effective. (RELATED: Study finds Pfizer vaccine protects against mutations in the UK and South Africa, without the need for an additional vaccine)
Modern also announced that its vaccine is effective against new variants detected in the UK and South Africa, but it is not as protective against the variant found in South Africa.