A pharmacist gives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a resident of a nursing home in Bronx County, New York, on December 21st.
Photographer: Eric Lee / Bloomberg
Photographer: Eric Lee / Bloomberg
The United States now leads the world in injections of Covid-19 vaccines, with 1,008,025 doses given in the 10 days since the first doses were approved for use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
State-led vaccination campaigns are being kicked out of Pfizer Inc. and Modern Inc., initially focused on hundreds of thousands of health workers across the country battling the virus on the front lines of hospitals. Vaccines require an interval of two injections a week to achieve the highest level of protection.
China, which has several domestic vaccines, has vaccinated more than 650,000 people and says it has administered a million doses. That figure could actually be far higher, or at least higher than the total U.S. number, as the country provided rare updates on its effort. Russia has vaccinated 440,000 people. Both countries had an advantage in August when they approved domestic vaccines before they were fully tested.
The United Kingdom is also making rapid progress in delivering recordings and is expected to deliver an update to its account as soon as Wednesday afternoon.
Urgency is rising as a wave of winter infections floods the northern hemisphere. New variants of the disease have been discovered in Great Britain and South Africa. Mutations appear to make the virus more contagious and can increase infections among healthy young people. In the US more than 2,500 people die every day.
For daily updates on the introduction of the vaccine, follow Bloomberg’s vaccine monitoring program here.