(Reuters) – Nearly 9 million Americans had received their first COVID-19 vaccine dose since Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, as states rushed to ramp up the vaccinations that have yet to slow the roaring pandemic.
The 8,987,322 people stabbed with the first of two shots represent less than a third of the 25 million total doses given out to states by the U.S. government, according to the CDC.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Monday sought permission from the Trump administration to directly purchase 100,000 doses of the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE, which has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in case of emergency.
The FDA has also approved a vaccine made by Moderna Inc.
“We remain ready to speed up distribution to get doses in the arms,” Whitmer, a first-term Democrat, said in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters the city could run out of vaccine doses if the federal government stops sending. He has committed to inoculate 1 million New Yorkers by the end of January.
US President-elect Joe Biden is considering releasing more vaccine doses to states that the federal government has stockpiled in an effort to ensure adequate supplies for a required second dose. Biden will take up his duties on January 20.
Second injections of both authorized vaccines are prescribed for three or four weeks after the first.
Public health experts have said that no U.S. state, including New York, has so far nearly used up its federal amount of vaccines, a much slower-than-expected rollout due in part to rigid rules that severely limit who can become vaccinated.
The vaccinations have yet to make a dent in the health crisis, as the pandemic claimed an average of about 3,200 lives nationwide in the past week. COVID-19 has killed more than 374,000 people in the United States since March.
States have expanded vaccination capacity in recent days with the ad hoc conversion of sports venues, convention halls and empty schools into vaccine centers.
DODGER STADIUM BECOMES A MASS VACCINATION SITE
Monday was the last day of testing for the virus at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium, which, according to local leaders, will be converted into a mass vaccination site by the end of the week.
Los Angeles County, with a population of about 10 million people, has been the epicenter of the latest wave of the pandemic in the United States, with cases and deaths since early November and overwhelming many hospitals.
Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County, told a news conference on Monday that there were more than 8,000 hospitalizations on Jan. 8, an 884% increase from early November.
“This deadly virus continues to spread at an alarming rate … We fully expect a fresh increase now that we are nearly two weeks away from the New Year holidays,” Ferrer said.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last week admitted to demanding that all health workers receive a vaccine before other groups qualify, leading to hundreds of doses being wasted as semi-finished vials were thrown away at the end of each day.
He has since said that certain groups of other essential workers and people over 75 can make appointments starting Monday to get an injection.
There are now more than 4 million people in New York State who are eligible for the vaccine in a population of about 19 million, Cuomo said Monday at his annual State of the State address, but only about 1 million doses are on hand .
“We only get 300,000 doses per week from the federal government,” he said. “At this rate, it will take 14 weeks for us to get enough doses for those who are currently eligible.”
New York has recorded nearly 40,000 COVID-19-related deaths so far, the vast majority of all US states. Nearly 30,000 people have died in California, the country’s most populous state.
Texas and Florida have been vaccinating people over 65 since late December, although reports from those states have indicated that demand far exceeds the nominations.
Reporting by Maria Caspani and Jonathan Allen in New York, Anurag Maan in Bangalore, Daniel Trotta in San Diego and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Aurora Ellis and Christopher Cushing