The Biden government announced on Tuesday that it is further increasing weekly vaccine shipments that the federal government sends to states.
The White House’s COVID-19 response team has announced that states will receive 14.5 million doses from next week, a jump from 13.5 million.
The team tweeted that the figure is “an increase of nearly 70% since we took office just over a month ago.”
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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
Jen PsakiTanden’s path to confirmation looks increasingly unsustainable Asian Pacific American Caucus Urges Senators to Confirm Tanden Biden to Order Flags for Half Staff to Mark 500,000 Virus Deaths MORE said Tuesday the White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients
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This afternoon, we announced that we will increase the weekly vaccine supply to states to 14.5 million doses from next week, up from the 13.5 million we announced last week.
That’s an increase of almost 70% since we took office a little over a month ago.
– White House COVID-19 Response Team (@WHCOVIDResponse) February 23, 2021
The announcement comes a week after the White House announced it would increase the number of doses distributed from 11 million to 13.5 million.
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The Biden government is working to step up its vaccination efforts in the face of a slew of variants that appear to be more contagious than the original coronavirus strain that spread around the world. COVID-19 cases are falling nationwide, but the presence of the variants threatens to make that drop only temporary.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 65 million people have been vaccinated with at least one injection of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, the only two approved by the Food and Drug Administration to date. Of those people, nearly 20 million have received both doses, or about 6 percent of the U.S. population.
The expansion of the federal government’s distribution of the vaccines comes as Moderna and Pfizer said Tuesday they could deliver more than 130 million additional doses combined by the end of March. The two companies already have contracts to provide 600 million doses.