Over 2 million people in the United States have received a vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to the agency’s Monday update, 11,445,175 million doses of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been distributed across the United States, although only 2,127,143 have received the first dose, per Monday’s data.
On Christmas Eve, the CDC reported that over 1 million had received the vaccine.
The news comes as top public health officials emphasize the importance of receiving the vaccine. They further stress that reaching a semblance of normality in 2021 is largely dependent on what Dr. Anthony Fauci described as getting the “overwhelming majority” of the population vaccinated.
“It’s going to depend on our success in vaccinating what I would say is an overwhelming majority of the population, between 70 to 85 percent,” Fauci said during an appearance on PODCAST-19 last week.
“If we can do that, by mid to end of the summer, I think as we get into fall, October, November, times like that, I think we will be very close to a degree of normality,” he added.
Similarly, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday said the course of 2021, or a “post-COVID future,” depends largely on “getting those vaccines now in people’s arms.”
“What does 2021 look like? 2021 looks like what we’re going to make it look like. It’s going to be what we do, and, clearly, the key is going to be the vaccine,” he said.
“It’s the one really good piece of news we had in 2020 — was that the research community, the medical community, came up with highly effective vaccines,” he continued.
“So it’s about getting those vaccines now in people’s arms right? … But what matters is getting it in people’s arms,” the Cuomo stressed.
Vaccines have, thus far, been limited to frontline healthcare workers as well as more vulnerable populations, although members of Congress are also able to receive the vaccine. Some, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), have expressed their opposition to lawmakers receiving the vaccine before the more vulnerable members of the population.
The CDC reported 19,055,869 cumulative cases of the Wuhan virus nationwide as of Monday.
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