After a frustratingly slow start, it appears that the pace of vaccinations has rapidly picked up in the United States and is closing in on the target for daily doses that had been set by both the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration.
To be sure, there’s a long way to go. The U.S. has only given first doses to about 3% of the population, well short of the most ambitious estimates as to what it would take for herd immunity, let alone the 80% to 85% Dr. Anthony Fauci standard.
However, as this chart from Our World in Data shows, things have definitely been trending in the right direction over the past week, with daily doses administered having more than doubled. Finally, an upward sloping curve to get excited about.
But even this chart understates the progress because it’s the seven-day average, which is at over 700,000. On Wednesday, the U.S. hit 951,000. That’s great news considering the Trump administration’s target of about 30 million a month, and Biden’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days would come out to about 1 million per day.
At this point, the U.S. has only administered about 10 million of the 29 million doses that have been distributed to states, or about one-third. So there’s a ways to go before we run into any sort of issues with vaccine availability. At the moment, the issue is getting people appointments rather than the supply of vaccines.
Hopefully, as the ability of states to administer vaccines accelerates, the number of vaccines can be replenished fast enough to keep up with demand. Regardless, this is an encouraging trend, as other trends, such as the mounting death toll, are quite discouraging.
