President Joe Biden held a commemoration ceremony Thursday to celebrate the 50 million vaccine doses that have been distributed during his short time in office.
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The Biden administration has set a goal to administer 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in their first 100 days in office — and the administration seems well on its way to achieving that goal, reaching the halfway point after just 36 days in office.
Biden has received some criticism for setting the bar too low on vaccinations — the U.S. was already distributing an average of about 900,000 doses of vaccine a day by the time he took office on Jan. 20.
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. has administered about 67 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine since December, when Pfizer’s vaccine candidate became the first to be authorized for emergency use. Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for use a few weeks later.
For the last week, the U.S. has administered an average of 1.3 million doses per day — a number that has dropped off as a result of last week’s severe weather across the country.
That number could rise in the weeks to come, as the FDA is on the verge of granting emergency use authorization to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. An FDA study released Wednesday found the single-shot vaccine to be safe and effective, and a CDC panel will hold a vote on formally recommending emergency use authorization on Friday.
Should approval be recommended, the FDA could grant emergency use authorization as soon as this weekend, meaning Johnson & Johnson could be fully vaccinating Americans as soon as early next week.