by Mary Rose Corkery
More than a million Americans have received the first round of vaccinations for the coronavirus as of Wednesday at 9 a.m., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced.
Over nine million coronavirus doses have been distributed and 1,008,025 doses have been administered, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.
States, territories, five federal agencies and local public health agencies started submitting the number of people getting their first doses of the vaccine on Dec. 14, the CDC said. The number of allocated doses and the number of people getting vaccinated are based on “current data available as of 9:00 a.m. ET on the day of reporting,” according to the CDC.
Nearly 9.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed, 1 million administered – U.S. CDC https://t.co/nwAjPtMrQ8 pic.twitter.com/S4aaNYZtUs
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 23, 2020
The numbers include vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech as well as Moderna, the CDC said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency authorization approval use for Moderna’s vaccine on Friday.
The FDA’s approval of the Moderna vaccine made the U.S. the first country to give approval to two safe and effective vaccines to fight the coronavirus. The FDA’s key advisory panel unanimously voted in favor to recommend the emergency use authorization for Moderna’s vaccine, which permitted it’s approval and nationwide distribution.
Video footage showed the first shipment of Pfizer’s vaccine leaving it’s manufacturing plant in Michigan on Dec. 13. The FDA granted emergency authorization for Pfizer’s vaccine after a key panel overwhelmingly endorsed the vaccine’s safety.
Experts project the U.S. will have an increase in coronavirus cases after Christmas and there have been 3,000 coronavirus deaths per day in the U.S., The Hill reported. It’s expected that the U.S. will hit the worst phase of the pandemic since it started and officials said despite the vaccines being distributed, Americans should still adhere to health measures.
The CDC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Mary Rose Corkery is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
