US Will Have Enough Coronavirus Vaccine For 300 Million Americans By Fall

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced that the United States would have enough doses of coronavirus vaccine to inoculate 300 million Americans by fall.

Speaking from the White House, President Joe Biden revealed the government recently purchased an additional 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate nearly the entire U.S. population by early fall. He also outlined new measures to increase the weekly vaccine allocation to states, tribes and territories to 10 million doses over the next three weeks.

"This is a wartime undertaking. It's not hyperbole," Biden said at the White House. "We now have a national strategy to beat Covid-19. It's comprehensive. It's based on science, not politics. It's based on truth, not denial, and it is detailed."

"This is going to help make sure governors, mayors and local leaders have greater certainty around supply, so they can carry out their plans to vaccinate as many people as possible," the president added.

The Biden administration would buy 100 million doses from Pfizer/BioNTech and another 100 million from Moderna Inc. Each person would require two doses of the vaccine, with the second shot being administered a month after the first.

Several states have experienced a shortage in vaccine supply, forcing authorities to cancel tens of thousands of appointments for a first dose.

Biden’s announcement comes as the number of coronavirus cases and deaths per day dropped over recent weeks. Health officials are recording an average of 3,100 deaths and 170,000 new cases per day, down from more than 3,350 deaths and 250,000 daily cases two weeks ago.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the numbers reflect a “peaking and plateauing” after the holiday surge. Ali Mokdad, a health metrics sciences professor at the University of Washington, said an increase in mask-wearing has helped improve the numbers.

While the coronavirus numbers are going down, health experts warn Americans to continue taking precautions as more contagious variants of the virus have been detected in several states across the nation.

“I think we were on track to have a good — or a better, at least — spring and summer, and I’m worried that the variants might be throwing us a curveball,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Associated Press.