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The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told NBC’s “Today” show that he believes the pace of vaccination will pick up between March and April.
More doses should be available daily by then, he said. And he said he was “fairly certain” that towards the end of April, pharmacies, community vaccination centers and mobile units will help pick up the pace – and not just for higher priority groups. .
“I imagine that by April it will be what I would call, you know, for better wording, an open season,” Fauci said. “Namely, virtually anyone and anyone in any category could start to get the vaccine.”
Pfizer and Moderna, the two companies that currently have Covid-19 vaccines licensed in the United States, have both started trials for children – but started with older groups.
The Pfizer trial in children ages 12 to 15 is fully enrolled with 2,259 participants. The company said it expects to have results “in early 2021 and from there we plan to finalize our study in children aged 5 to 11.”
Moderna is still recruiting participants for its trial in children aged 12 to 18 and plans to start studying its vaccine in even younger children between 6 months and 11 years old.
“I think when we get to the school opening we will probably be able to recruit people who will enter first grade,” Fauci told ProPublica.
President Biden predicts 300 million vaccinations by July
Over the past seven days, the average number of doses given each day was close to 1.6 million, according to a CNN analysis of the data released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna have indicated that their weekly production is expected to increase.
Pfizer, which said it delivered 20 million doses to the United States by Jan.31, plans to deliver 200 million total doses by the end of May, with later. Moderna, which supplied 30.4 million by January 26, said it expects to have delivered 100 million total doses by the end of March, and more later.
President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the United States was on track to deliver vaccines to 300 million Americans “by the end of July.”
Biden also announced that the United States has purchased an additional Moderna and Pfizer vaccine.
More States Relax Covid-19 Restrictions, Despite Warnings About Variants
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte on Wednesday signed a bill protecting businesses and places of worship from legal liability for the transmission of Covid-19 as long as they take action to follow public health guidelines, and announced that he would not extend the mask’s mandate statewide.
“The mask’s mandate will expire on Friday,” the governor said, adding: “Since we are not out of the woods yet, I will continue to wear a mask, and I will encourage all Montanais to do the same.”
However, New York stadiums must limit their capacity to 10%; they must ensure that all staff and spectators have received a negative Covid-19 PCR test within the past 72 hours; and they must enforce face covers and assigned and socially remote seats.
In New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said the state would drop its mandatory quarantine rule for people coming from “high risk” states, attributing the policy change to a “cautiously brighter pandemic prospect afterwards. several months of unsustainable pressure on the state health care system. ”
Dr Barney Graham, head of the laboratory and deputy director of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center, told President Joe Biden on Thursday that current coronavirus vaccines should work against variants of the virus.
“It’s absolutely essential that we continue to take steps beyond vaccination to keep this under control,” Besser said. “The more this virus is allowed to spread in our communities, the more we will see these variants spread.”
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down, so far
The CDC said a more transmissible variant first identified in the UK could be dominant in the US in March and could worsen the spread of the virus.
For now, however, the rates of new Covid-19 cases and deaths, as well as the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals, are dropping after the holiday peaks:
– Case: The United States recorded an average of 104,304 new cases of Covid-19 per day over the past week – a 58% drop from the country’s peak average of more than 249,800 on January 8, according to the data from Johns Hopkins University.
– Hospitalizations: More than 76,900 Covid-19 patients were in U.S. hospitals Wednesday – the lowest total since November 16, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The number has been below 100,000 for 12 consecutive days.
– Deaths: The country has recorded an average of 2,779 Covid-19 deaths per day over the past week – down from the country’s maximum average of 3,363 in mid-January, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
– The national test positivity rate – or the percentage of tests done that turn out positive – now averages 6.49%, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
That’s down from a winter high of around 13.6% in early January. But the World Health Organization has recommended governments not to reopen until the test’s positivity rate is 5% or less for at least two weeks.
CNN’s Naomi Thomas, Andy Rose, Michael Nedelman, Keri Enriquez, Jacqueline Howard, Ben Tinker, Jennifer Hauser and Brad Parks contributed to this report.
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