US vaccinations pass 50 million
UK health secretary believes Covid will be something people can ‘live with’ by the end of the year
Patty Castillo, 46, will receive a vaccination against the coronavirus at a dockworkers drive-in center in Long Beach, California on Saturday. (Photo from Reuters)
The United States has administered more than 50 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine in the two months since the injections began rolling out, it was found on Saturday.
According to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, the 50.1 million injections given in the US represent 30% of the 168 million doses administered in 77 countries to date.
In the UK, which, along with the US, has made the most progress in vaccinations for major economies, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he expected the coronavirus to become a treatable disease that people could “live with,” as we do flu “by the end of the year.
He made the comment in an interview with the Daily telegram, which reported that the UK government was preparing to provide details on new drugs that will be tracked more quickly by the system of clinical trials.
Meanwhile, the University of Oxford will begin testing the Covid vaccine it co-developed with AstraZeneca on children, another potentially important step in ending the global pandemic.
The Oxford trial plans to enroll 300 children ages 6 to 17, the university said Saturday. The first vaccinations will take place this month, with as many as 240 children receiving the coronavirus vaccine and the rest a meningitis shot, which should cause similar side effects. In the US, AstraZeneca is expected to later conduct a larger trial involving thousands of children.
In the United States, 36.8 million people have now received at least one dose of a vaccine, and of those 12.8 million are fully vaccinated with a second injection.
According to Bloomberg, more than 1.7 million doses are administered per day in the US, based on a seven-day average.
In a related development, President Joe Biden has provisionally ruled out all passengers on flights from having to conduct coronavirus testing, saying the scientific evidence does not support implementation of the measure.
A White House statement said the Centers for Disease Control did not recommend such tests and that Biden would follow their lead.