WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th February, 2021) The Biden administration is stepping up the supply of coronavirus vaccines to 13.5 million doses per week, White House Press Secretary Jan Psaki said on Tuesday.
The administration was averaging just over 1.5 million shots a day or 10.5 million per week as of last week.
"We are increasing the vaccine supply to 13.5 million doses per week," Psaki said at a press briefing. "That will go out to all the states. This is a 57 percent increase from the amount states received when the president was inaugurated."
Biden, on entering office on January 20, had promised to administer 100 million COVID-19 vaccines by his 100th day in office. His administration has revamped the delivery mechanism for vaccines and boosted the number of medical personnel who can given out shots.
"We've increased the number of vaccinators and we've also increased the number of vaccination sites," Psaki said. "We're putting a plan in place to have several hundred community health centers for vaccinations to be distributed and working with states on mass vaccination centers and working to get vaccines in the hands of pharmacies."
The administration's approach is also being helped by a decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent days, after a surge from December through January.
According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and the COVID Tracking Project, the seven-day average of new daily cases went from a peak of nearly 246,000 on January 12, to nearly 94,000 on February 13. The seven-day average for COVID-19 hospitalizations, meanwhile, went from a peak of 132,474 on January 6 to 69,283 on February 13.
