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President Joe Biden announced Thursday that all adults in the United States will be eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine by May 1. “All adult Americans will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than May 1,” Biden said. “It’s much earlier than expected.”
Biden said not all adults will be able to get the vaccine right away, but they will at least be able to stand in line. Even so, he said the country will have enough vaccines for all adults by the end of May – a claim he has already made.
It’s a goal that, as Biden said, would have seemed unachievable just a few months ago. But there is good reason to believe that it is quite possible now.
The United States gave at least one dose of the vaccine to 64 million people on Thursday, including 33 million fully vaccinated people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, the United States administers approximately 2.2 million doses of the vaccine per day.
Even if that rate doesn’t improve at all, the United States could fully immunize more than 140 million Americans by May 1. That’s more than half of the roughly 260 million adults in the United States today. So even before Biden’s promised date, the majority of adults in America will be vaccinated.
There are also very good reasons to believe that the rate will increase. At the end of this month, pharmaceutical companies have indicated they will produce and ship more than 3 million vaccines per day. If states manage to turn those doses into gunshots as they receive them, the United States could immunize more than 165 million Americans by May, or roughly two-thirds of American adults.
And the vaccination rate could easily rise above that, as the supply continues to increase over the next month and a half.
In other words, Biden’s promise could come into effect at a time when only a third of American adults will still need to be vaccinated, when the country is likely to dispense injections at a rate of 3 million doses per day. , if not, more. At this point, the math simply matches: America’s remaining 95 million adults could really be covered in a month. The only obstacle, if all goes well, will be to make an appointment.
That’s not to say that the United States is destined to do all of this without any problems. Perhaps the pharmaceutical companies will not be able to deliver the supply they have promised. Maybe cities, states, and the federal government won’t jump all the logistical hurdles to get shots. Maybe something else will break a pretty complicated supply chain.
And as the supply increases, it is likely that vaccine reluctance will become a bigger problem, as more adults simply refuse a vaccine. To overcome this – to continue to increase the immunization rate nationwide – will require creative education and awareness campaigns, focusing on local pockets of resistance. This will pose its own logistical challenges.
But at least it all seems possible. This was not the case when Biden took office, as the rollout of vaccines in the country experienced difficulties and less than a million Americans were vaccinated per day. At the time, it was not clear if we could vaccinate all American adults by the end of the year. Now it looks like America could get the job done in just a few months.
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