The CDC says 9 million Americans now vaccinated while American states struggle

(Reuters) – Nearly 9 million Americans received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccination on Monday, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, as states struggled to increase vaccines that still need to slow the glaring pandemic.

The 8,987,322 people who were hit with the first of the two shots, according to the CDC, represent less than a third of the total 25 million doses distributed to the states by the United States government.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Monday asked the Trump administration for permission to directly purchase 100,000 doses of the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE, which was released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use.

The FDA also approved a vaccine made by Moderna Inc.

“We are still ready to speed up delivery to put doses on guns,” said Whitmer, a first-term Democrat, in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters the city could run out of vaccine doses if the federal government does not send more. He promised to inoculate 1 million New Yorkers by the end of January.

US President-elect Joe Biden is considering releasing more doses of vaccine to the states that the federal government has stored in an effort to ensure sufficient supplies for a second necessary dose. Biden takes office on January 20.

Second doses of both authorized vaccines are prescribed for three or four weeks after the first.

Public health experts said no state in the U.S., including New York, came close to using its federal vaccine quota, a much slower-than-expected implementation, attributed in part to strict rules that severely limit who can be vaccinated.

Vaccines have not yet affected the health crisis, as the pandemic claimed an average of about 3,200 lives across the country every day for the past week. COVID-19 has killed more than 374,000 people in the United States since March.

In recent days, states have increased vaccination capacity with the ad hoc conversion of sports facilities, convention halls and empty schools into vaccination centers.

DODGER STADIUM BECOMES A MASS VACCINATION PLACE

Monday marked the last day of testing for the virus at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which will be converted into a mass vaccination site by the end of the week, according to local leaders.

Los Angeles County, with a population of about 10 million, was the epicenter of the latest pandemic outbreak in the United States, with cases and deaths increasing since early November and many hospitals overburdened.

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told a news conference on Monday that hospitalizations reached more than 8,000 on January 8, an 884% increase from the beginning of November.

“This deadly virus continues to spread at alarming rates … We hope to see another increase now that the New Year holiday is almost two weeks away,” said Ferrer.

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave in to his requirement that all healthcare professionals receive a vaccine before other groups became eligible, which led to hundreds of doses being wasted, as semi-finished bottles were discarded at the end of each day.

Since Monday, he said that certain groups of other essential workers and people over 75 can make appointments to receive an injection.

There are now more than 4 million people in New York state eligible to receive the vaccine in a population of about 19 million, said Cuomo on Monday in his annual state of the state speech, but only about 1 million people. doses available.

“We only receive 300,000 doses a week from the federal government,” he said. “At this rate, it will take us 14 weeks, just to receive enough dosages for those currently eligible.”

So far, New York has recorded nearly 40,000 COVID-19-related deaths, by far the largest number of any US state. Nearly 30,000 people died in California, the country’s most populous state.

Texas and Florida have vaccinated people over 65 since the end of December, although reports from those states indicate that demand has far outpaced consultations.