More Americans received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine than tested positive for the virus, an early but hopeful milestone in the race to end the pandemic.
As of Monday afternoon, 26.5 million Americans had received one or both doses of the current vaccine, according to data collected by the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. Since the first U.S. patient tested positive outside Seattle a year ago, 26.2 million people have been in the country tested positive for the disease, and 441,000 died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
According to data collected by Bloomberg, the US administered shots daily than any other country in the world, giving approximately 1.35 million doses per day. While the explosion stumbled in its early days, nearly 7.8% of Americans have received one or more doses in the six weeks since the first gunshots, and 1.8% have been fully vaccinated.
“It is noteworthy that data for the first time today said that more people were vaccinated than had just been reported as newly diagnosed cases,” said Paula Cannon, a professor of microbiology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of South -California. ‘It’s worth celebrating. I’m all for it. ‘
Only a few other countries have crossed the milestone: Israel, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates beat the US days or weeks ago against the more vaccinations than cases.
Following a holiday boom in U.S. cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials are calling the summit, though it is likely due to behavioral changes, and still not the widespread impact of the vaccine. New cases of Covid-19, hospitalizations and visits to the emergency department are starting to decline, said Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases.
“Although these trends are encouraging, I would like to emphasize that the numbers nationwide are still high and that they are as high as they were at any stage in the pandemic. to this point, ‘he presented during an information session Friday by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “If this pandemic were a share, we might want to sell.”
It is still possible for the virus to roar back, especially if variants found in South Africa and elsewhere take hold. Studies suggest that vaccines, especially the newer shots of Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Inc., are less potent against the strain and at least one other.
The goal is to eventually achieve herd immunity, when so many Americans are protected thanks to a vaccine or natural infection that the virus struggles to spread and eventually becomes extinct. Public health officials, including Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading doctor on infectious diseases, estimate that 70% to 85% of the 330 million Americans must be exposed to the pathogen through virus or vaccine to reach that level.
A healthcare worker is giving away a dose of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine in New York on January 30th. More Americans received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine than tested positive for the virus.
Photographer: Johnny Milano / Bloomberg
Race for immunity
While infection from the past may create immunity, it is not clear how long it will last. And it does come at a cost – not just deaths, but also hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and some that report persistent illnesses and a staggering range of symptoms, including fatigue, depression and breathing problems.
“There is a price to pay for suffering and costs for the health system,” said Alessandro Sette, a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. “It’s protracted and serious.”
No deaths have meanwhile been definitively linked to the receipt of a Covid-19 vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary system for detecting adverse events contains reports of approximately 290 deaths after the administration of a coronavirus vaccine from January 22. Most were in the elderly with other health problems and no one was determined to get vaccinated.
Questions continue. It is still not clear how many people have been vaccinated or infected, and this may never happen. Many more people had the virus than tested positive, especially people with mild or asymptomatic cases.
Reported vaccinations are also lower than the number actually given because people are more focused on injecting them into the arms than recording the data in the tracking systems, Cannon said. Two shots are needed for full immunity, which received only 5.82 million Americans.
It is still early in the immunization effort, which is plagued by a lack of coordination, confusion over who should have access and a shortage of supply that has shrunk the number of people who could get out in the first weeks of the rollout.
It is also important to make sure the right people are vaccinated to get the most benefit, said Bill Moss, executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s International Vaccine Access Center.
“There are a lot of people who are vaccinated who do not fall into high-risk categories,” he said. ‘If this is the case, it will take longer to see a decline in serious illnesses and deaths. Everyone needs a vaccine at some point, but I’m worried about the inequalities in the system. ‘
The emerging variants have created new urgency to increase the rate of vaccinations, said Daniela Weiskopf, a research assistant at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. Every time the virus repeats, there is a chance that a variant may arise.
“The faster we interrupt it, the greater the chance that we will not see any more variants emerge,” she said.