President Biden announced on Thursday that the U.S. All adults in will be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine by May 1. “All adult Americans will be eligible to receive a vaccine after May 1,” Biden said. “It’s much earlier than expected.”
Biden clarified that not all adults will be vaccinated immediately, but they will at least be able to get in line. Even then, he said, there would be an adequate supply of vaccines for all adults in the country by the end of May – a claim he made earlier.
That’s a goal, as Biden said, that would have seemed vague a few months ago. But there is good reason to believe that it is now possible.
As of Thursday, the U.S. has given at least one dose of the vaccine to 64 million people, of which 33 million have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, the U.S. Administering about 2.5 million doses a day.
Even if that rate doesn’t improve at all, the U.S. By May 1, about 1 million to 1 million million Americans could be fully vaccinated, more than half of the approximately 300 million adults in the United States today. Therefore, before Biden’s promised date, most adults in the United States will be vaccinated.
There are also many good reasons to think that rates will increase. By the end of this month, pharmaceutical companies have Hint They will produce and ship more than 3 million vaccines a day. If states manage to turn these doses into weapon shots, U.S. Vaccines about 150 million to 160 million Americans – about two-thirds of U.S.
And vaccination rates could easily rise above that as supply continues to increase in the coming months and weeks.
In other words, Biden’s promise could begin at a time when the U.S. One-third of adults will still need to be vaccinated, while the country will give shots at the rate of one million doses a day, if not more. At the time, the math just fit: the remaining 100 million adults in America would actually be covered in a month’s time. The only hurdle, if all goes well, is the appointment.
That is not to say that the U.S. Determined to do all this without any difficulty. Perhaps the drug companies will not be able to deliver on what they have promised. Perhaps cities, states, and feeds will not overcome all logistical barriers to getting a shot at a weapon. Something else will break in a fairly complex supply chain.
And as supply increases, presumably vaccine shrinkage will become a major issue as more adults refuse the vaccine. Getting out of it – to continue the nationwide rate of vaccination – will require a constructive education and awareness campaign, focused on local pockets of resistance. It will pose its own logistical challenges.
But at least all this seems possible. That wasn’t the case when Biden took office, as the country’s vaccine struggle struggles and fewer than 1 million Americans a day get shots. At the time, it was unclear whether we would have all U.S. by the end of the year. Adults can be vaccinated. Now it looks like America will be able to work in just a few months.
