When can you get your shot? Target now July
Top U.S. health officials said Wednesday that the U.S. will have enough vaccine for every American by the “end of July,” echoing an estimate from the president hours earlier but contradicting predictions from the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
“We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a task force briefing Wednesday.
President Joe Biden offered a similar timeline in a CNN town hall Tuesday. “By the end of July, we’ll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American,” he said.
The estimates contradict recent predictions from Dr. Anthony Fauci who last week said April would be “open season” for vaccinations when any adult will be able to get a shot. On Tuesday, he walked back that timeline, telling CNN that vaccines may not be available to the general public until mid-May or even June.
Last week, the U.S. administered a seven-day average of 1.7 million doses a day, up from fewer than a million doses a day in mid-January. But as weather continued to wreak havoc across the nation, some vaccination sites canceled appointments, and vaccine shipments continued to be delayed, Zients said.
Administration to invest in expanding coronavirus testing, genome sequencing
The Biden administration announced measures aimed at expanding coronavirus testing and genome sequencing in the U.S. amid an influx of variants. Here are the highlights:
h $650 million to expand testing opportunities for K-8 schools and underserved congregate settings, such as homeless shelters.
h Regional coordinating centers to organize distribution of testing supplies and partner with labs across the country, including universities and commercial labs, to collect specimens, perform tests and report results to the health agencies.
h $815 million to increase domestic manufacturing of testing supplies and materials that have created shortage issues.
hA nearly $200 million plan by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify and track emerging strains, increasing sequencing capacity from about 7,000 samples per week to 25,000.
The White House said the investments are “only the beginning” of what is needed to expand testing nationwide. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which he wants Congress to pass in the coming weeks, would invest $50 billion to expand and support testing.
Other top headlines
h Doctors across the nation have been seeing a striking increase in cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children or MIS-C, an inflammatory syndrome that strikes some young people, usually several weeks after infection by the coronavirus, The New York Times reports. The surge follows the overall spike of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
h Fauci cited early data that suggests vaccines have “very important implications” for preventing transmission. Research is “starting to point to the fact” that the vaccine is important, not only for the health of the individual to protect them from the infection, but also from a public health standpoint for interfering with transmission.
“When your turn to get vaccinated comes up, get vaccinated,” Fauci said. “It will have a very important impact on the dynamics of the outbreak in our country.”
At the same time, the recent drop in new daily cases in the U.S. is not because of vaccinations, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, said.