March 13 (UPI) — The United States has administered a milestone 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed Saturday.
More than 133 million vaccine doses have been distributed and more than 101 million have been administered, according to the agency’s COVID Data Tracker.
Nearly 20% of the U.S. population has received a first dose of the vaccine and more than 10% are fully vaccinated, data shows.
With an initial focus on vaccinating elderly Americans, more than 61% of the U.S. population age 65 and older have received at least one dose. And more than 32% of the same population have been fully vaccinated.
In total, nearly 70 million people in the United States have received at least one dose and 35 million are fully vaccinated.
The milestone accomplishes President Joe Biden’s goal to have at least 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered in his first 100 days in office.
Biden has used the Defense Production Act to ramp up production after the Trump administration came up short of its stated goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, with less than 3 million vaccinated.
Worldwide, the United States now has risen to the fourth highest percentage of its population fully vaccinated, trailing only Bahrain, Seychelles and Israel, according to Bloomberg’s COVID-19 Tracker.
In his first prime-time address to the nation on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic, Biden listed vaccines, among other measures, such as wearing masks and staying socially distanced, as keys to combatting the virus.
Biden added that he will direct all states, tribes and territories to make all adults eligible to be vaccinated no later than May 1.
He also said that if the American people unite in following COVID-19 safety measures and get fully vaccinated, they can have small gatherings for July 4th.
“A July 4th with your loved ones is the goal,” Biden said Thursday, but “a lot can happen; conditions can change,” he added, cautioning that COVID-19 variants might make things worse before they get better.
Amid the disbursal of vaccines, some states are loosening COVID-19 restrictions and more Americans are resuming travel.
Transportation Security Administration “officers screened 1,357,111 people at airport security checkpoints yesterday, Friday March 12,” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein tweeted Saturday. “The last time checkpoint throughput was that high was March 15, 2020. If you choose to fly, wear that mask!”
In California, state officials will ease COVID-19 restrictions in more than a dozen counties on Sunday morning after reaching goal to administer 2 million doses in its most vulnerable communities.
Thirteen counties in California will move from the most restrictive purple tier to the red tier, which means indoor dining can resume, along with operations at gyms, movie theaters and places of worship, provided they abide by capacity restrictions.
The impacted counties include: Kings, Lake, Monterey, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare, Ventura and Yuba.
In May, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk restarted production in defiance of Alameda County-mandated shutdown to control COVID-19 spread, and since then, county data has shown over 400 COVID-19 cases reported at the Tesla plant in Fremont, Calif., PlainSite tweeted Friday.
PlainSite, a website dedicated to legal system transparency, obtained the data following a court ruling this year, The Washington Post reported.
As part of a deal struck in mid-May for Tesla to re-open despite having around 10 COVID-19 cases at the time, Tesla was required to report positive cases to the health department, according to the Post.
“Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules,” Musk tweeted in May. “I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”
The United States reported nationwide 61,204 new COVID-19 cases and 1,769 new deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
Across the country, COVID-19 has infected over 29 million people and killed some 533,000, Johns Hopkins global map shows.
The United States has the highest number of cases and highest number deaths of any country worldwide.
Across the world, COVID-19 has infected over 119 million and killed over 2.6 million, global map shows.
