On Saturday, the U.S. hit a single-day record of administering 4 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine. Saturday’s news was followed by another record shattered as the U.S. hit an average of 3 million shots per day over the previous seven days, making last week the highest 7-day average of shots per day to date.
President Biden’s successful vaccine distribution effort combined with the news last week of the economy adding 916,000 new jobs in the month of March are the clearest signs yet that the American Rescue Plan is doing exactly what President Biden intended it would do: get our economy back on track and put an end to this crisis.
Read the full story from CNN on the record-breaking vaccination weekend.
US hits 4 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in a day for a new record
Madeline Holcombe and Ray Sanchez // April 3, 2021
(CNN) More than 4 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine were reported administered in the past 24 hours, setting a new record and bringing the seven-day average to more than 3 million a day, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Saturday.
Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, the Covid-19 data director at the White House, celebrated with a tweet early Saturday afternoon.
“Wow a record reporting day!! +4.08M doses reported administered over the total yesterday,” Shahpar wrote.
“First day w/ 4M or more. Also first time averaging more than 3M per day over the past week. Millions coming together to accelerate our progress toward controlling the pandemic!”
If people continue to wear masks, avoid crowds and let the vaccination program do its work, life will get back to normal in the US more quickly, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser on Covid-19.
“We are going to get to where (people) want to be, where I want to be, where you want to be — where we have enough people protected with the vaccines that we can go out and watch the cherry blossoms, and we can go out and enjoy as we get warmer weather,” Fauci told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “It’s going to happen. It will.”
And once transmission rates fall far enough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue revised guidelines about what fully vaccinated people can safely do, Fauci said.
“This is not going to last forever because every day you get 4 million, 3 million people vaccinated, you get closer and closer to control,” he said. “So what we are saying is double down. Just hang in there a bit longer, and the vaccine and the vaccinations in this country are going to override the surge in the virus. There’s no doubt the vaccine is going to win out.”
It has been nearly 109 days since the first Covid-19 vaccine shot was administered in the US, and 104 million people have since received at least one dose, the agency said. More than 59 million of them are fully vaccinated.
More than 161 million doses have been administered in the US, according to agency data published Saturday.
That’s 4,081,959 doses reported administered since Friday — a seven-day average of 3,072,527 doses per day. Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.
With more than 30.6 million people having been infected with the virus and 554,522 people who have died of it, experts and officials are racing to get the population vaccinated before a possible fourth surge of cases.