The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it is further increasing the weekly vaccine shipments that the federal government sends to states.
The White House’s COVID-19 response team announced that states will now receive 14.5 million doses starting next week, a jump from 13.5 million.
The team wrote on Twitter that the figure is “an increase of almost 70% since I took over a little over a month ago.”
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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
Jen PsakiTanden’s path to confirmation seems increasingly unbearable The American Pacific American Caucus urges senators to confirm Tanden Biden to order half-staff flags to mark 500K virus deaths MORE said Tuesday that the White House response coordinator COVID-19 Jeff Zients
Jeff Zients: Hill’s Morning Report – Biden on COVID-19: Americans will be “better” in overnight health care next year: CDC study says double masking works | House Democrats propose $ 19 billion COVID aid package | Industry groups support ObamaCare reforms proposed by Democrats Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by TikTok – Day 1 goes to Dems, while GOP smokes Trump lawyers MORE he first made the announcement on a call with governors Tuesday morning.
This afternoon, we announced that we will increase the weekly vaccine supply to states to 14.5 million doses starting next week, compared to the 13.5 million we announced last week.
This is an increase of almost 70% since I took over a little over a month ago.
– COVID-19 White House Response Team (@WHCOVIDResponse) February 23, 2021
The announcement comes a week after the White House announced it was increasing the number of doses distributed from 11 million to 13.5 million.
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The Biden administration is working to strengthen its vaccination efforts in the face of a number of variants that appear to be more infectious than the original coronavirus strain spread around the globe. COVID-19 cases are falling across the country, but the presence of variants threatens to make this decrease only temporary.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 65 million people have been inoculated with at least one photo of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, the only two so far approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Of those people, nearly 20 million received both doses, or about 6% of the US population.
The federal government’s expansion of vaccine distribution comes as Moderna and Pfizer said on Tuesday that they will be able to deliver more than 130 million additional combined doses by the end of March. The two companies already have contracts to supply 600 million doses.