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Over 11.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed, 2.1 million administered: US CDC

The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received first dose are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, COVID-19 vaccines as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday, the agency said.

December 29, 2020 / 08:05 AM IST
SII has been adding 40-50 million doses every month, and will be reaching production capacity of about 300 million doses by July 2021. (Image Source: Reuters)

SII has been adding 40-50 million doses every month, and will be reaching production capacity of about 300 million doses by July 2021. (Image Source: Reuters)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had administered 2,127,143 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning and had distributed 11,445,175 doses.

The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received first dose are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, COVID-19 vaccines as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on Dec. 26, the agency had administered 1,944,585 first vaccine doses and distributed 9,547,925 doses.

The agency also reported 19,055,869 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 145,959 cases from its previous count, and said the number of deaths had risen by 1,345 to 332,246.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 p.m. ET on Sunday versus its previous report a day earlier.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

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How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Reuters
first published: Dec 29, 2020 07:59 am