In the United States, more than 26 million people have received their first dose of a COVID vaccine, as of Monday afternoon, surpassing the number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began.
On Tuesday, the CDC said more than 52 million vaccine doses have been distributed, with 6 million people receiving the second dose of their two-shot regimen.
Each day, the U.S. is administering nearly 1.3 million doses, according to Bloomberg News. At least 8% of Americans have received one or more doses, while 2% are fully vaccinated.
Dr. Paula Cannon of the University of Southern California told Bloomberg, “That’s worth celebrating. I’m all for that win.”
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and Israel have also surpassed the milestone of distributing more vaccines than the number of cases reported.
New cases, hospitalizations, and ED visits have also started to decline in the U.S. However, researchers across the nation have warned that the highly contagious variants of the coronavirus, which have been reported in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil, could change the tide again.
In a virtual meeting with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Dr. Jay Butler, Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases for the CDC, said, “While these trends are encouraging, I want to stress that the numbers nationally are still high, and they’re as high as they’ve been at any point in the pandemic up to this point.”
Patients who have recovered from COVID could face a “very high rate” of reinfection if the new strains of the virus become dominant, according to CNN.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Monday, “We need to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can.”
“Viruses cannot mutate if they don’t replicate,” Dr. Fauci added. “And if you stop their replication by vaccinating widely and not giving the virus an open playing field to continue to respond to the pressures that you put on it, you will not get mutations.” The article was published Thursday on Medscape Medical News.
