The CDC said 1 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered, with distribution expected to significantly ramp up in the coming months.
Rob Lindsay
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a vaccine milestone on Wednesday as COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations continue to rise.
More than 1,008,025 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in the US, and the CDC said it has distributed 9,465,725 doses in total. The news comes just 10 days after the start of an accelerated, ambitious vaccination campaign.
"While we celebrate this historic milestone, we also acknowledge the challenging path ahead," CDC director Robert Redfield said in the CDC press release. "There is currently a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccine in the US, but supply will increase in the weeks and months to come."
The CDC added that the number of vaccines distributed includes doses of both the Moderna and the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, but the tally of doses administered only includes the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
Federal panels and states continue to determine who will be next in line to get the vaccine.
After approximately 24 million healthcare workers and nursing home residents are vaccinated, the CDC is recommending that frontline essential workers and people over 75 are next in line. The next priority group would encapsulate about 49 million people, including teachers, first responders, US Postal Service employees, and grocery store workers.
Ultimately, states decide the order, and a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report confirmed that a majority of states are following CDC priority group guidelines, but Nevada, New Hampshire, and Wyoming are among a handful of states prioritizing other groups, like law enforcement.
Politicians in DC, young and old, have also been among the first vaccinated.
By the end of January, Insider projects that 50 million people within the initial priority groups will be vaccinated, and by March, Operation Warp Speed aims to have 100 million Americans vaccinated.
If distribution is uninterrupted, then a quarter of Americans could be vaccinated by the spring.
"By the time we get through December, January, February, March, April, we hopefully will have been able to get to the people who are listed as priority people," Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters in November. "I would say starting in April, May, June, July, as we get into the late spring and early summer, that people in the so-called general population, who do not have underlying conditions or other designations that would make them priority, could get them."
