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More than 225 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the US, according to data published Saturday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC reported 225,640,460 doses administered, nearly 78% of the 290,685,655 doses distributed.
That’s 3,318,230 reported doses administered since Friday, for a seven-day average of 2,824,078 doses per day.
More than 138 million people have now received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine and more than 93 million have been fully vaccinated.
To note: Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.
Kyro Maseh, the owner of Lawlor Pharmasave in Toronto celebrated with staff and volunteers on Wednesday after administering their 1,000th dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
They rang a bell and set off mini-confetti cannons to mark the occasion.
Maseh shouted, “One thousand shots,” and his staff replied “Covid Gone!”
He said they do a smaller celebration every time he finishes a 10 dose vial of the vaccine.
Maseh said they’ve been administering the vaccine for about four weeks and that they are vaccinating between 40 and 90 people a day depending on the supply.
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A first case of the B.1.617 coronavirus variant first identified in India has been found in Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) announced on Saturday.
The B.1.617 variant includes a number of mutations. The Indian Health Ministry has said that such mutations increase infectivity and aids in escaping immune response.
According to FOPH, the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom is currently the most widespread in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, with 16,922 confirmed cases according to the latest official figures on Friday.
India on Saturday reported 346,786 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the total to more than 16.6 million cases in the country, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian Ministry of Health.
The death toll for the past 24-hours hit 2,624, which was also a daily record for the country.
Saturday’s tally represents the highest number of cases recorded in a single day anywhere in the world, according to a CNN tally of figures from John Hopkins University. It is the third day running that India has broken the record.
Before that, the global highest was 300,310 cases recorded in the US on Jan. 2.
India has recorded a total of 16,610,481 cases as of Saturday, including 189,544 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration said they had lifted their recommend pause on use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine Friday.
The agencies recommended the pause April 13 after learning of six cases of a rare blood clotting syndrome among women who had recently received the vaccine.
Earlier Friday, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended lifting the pause.
The CDC said it now has collected reports of 15 such cases, all in women and 13 of them in women under 50.
