Although more contagious variants are spreading in the United States, top health officials on Sunday sounded optimistic that the supply of vaccines and the vaccination rate would gradually increase.
“Demand is clearly better than supply at the moment,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading doctor on infectious diseases, said in the NBC program “Meet the Press”.
“I can tell you that it will be better from February to March to April, because the number of vaccinations available will increase significantly.”
The number of shots fired daily in the United States has increased recently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 2.2 million doses were given on Saturday and 1.6 million on Friday. That brought the latest seven-day average to 1.4 million a day, approaching President Biden’s new goal of 1.5 million shots a day.
In addition, the supply of vaccines is increasing, although it is still well below demand. Federal officials recently increased shipments to the states to 10.5 million doses per week as Moderna and Pfizer gradually increased production. The two companies have an agreement to deliver 400 million doses to the United States by the summer – enough to vaccinate 200 million people.
Pfizer recently said it will now deliver its doses by May two months ahead of schedule, in part because it now counts an extra dose in each vial it manufactures. And Moderna is considering a production change that would allow it to increase the number of doses in its vials to 15 out of 10.
Officials are also counting on the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a Johnson & Johnson vaccine later this month. Although the company will initially supply only a few million doses to the United States, production is expected to increase significantly by April. Other vaccines from Novavax and AstraZeneca may also be approved for US use in the spring, further increasing supply.
Officials are rushing to vaccinate as many people as possible to transcend more contagious variants of the virus first identified in Britain and South Africa. The variant from Britain, known as B.1.1.7, is spreading rapidly in the United States, with its occurrence doubling approximately every ten days, according to a new study. The CDC said it could become the dominant form of the virus in the United States by March.
Although the variant is of concern because it is more transmissible than earlier variants, vaccine developers are more concerned about a variant discovered in South Africa, known as B.1.351, because current vaccines appear to be less effective. Several manufacturers have said they are addressing the issue by developing new versions of their vaccines, which could serve as a stimulant. The Food and Drug Administration said it was working on a plan to give permission for the new vaccine versions.
Developers of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the University of Oxford on Sunday said they expected a modified version of their vaccine to be available by autumn.
On the CBS program ‘Face the Nation’, dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner and a member of Pfizer’s board, said Sunday that he believes it will be possible to develop an amplifier that ‘bakes in many different variations’. what we see. ”
“I think there is a reasonable chance that we will be able to stay ahead of this virus,” he said.