Health

US gov’t: 70 pct. of Americans now fully vaccinated against Covid-19

Washington, Nov 1 (EFE).- The US government announced Monday that 70 percent of adults in the country have already been fully immunized against Covid-19, adding that on Nov. 8 it expects that its plan to inoculate 5-11-year-olds against the sometimes deadly disease will be fully operational.

Jeffrey Zients, the coordinator of the Joe Biden administration’s response to the pandemic made the announcement at a virtual press conference.

He said that the country had hit two important landmarks, namely 80 percent of adults having received at least one dose of the available vaccines and 70 percent of adults, including the most elderly, being fully vaccinated.

Vaccination in the US slowed down during the summer, but it has regained momentum in recent weeks due to the vaccine mandates for federal employees implemented by Biden and those put in place for their own workers by numerous companies On the other hand, Zients emphasized that the US has ensured that there are sufficient doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for the 28 million children in this country aged 5-11, and he said that the White House expected that starting in the week of Nov. 8, the vaccination process for those children will be up and running.

“We are not waiting on the operations and logistics,” he said, adding that “We are in great shape on supply.

“Starting the week of Nov. 8, the kids vaccination program will be fully up and running,” Zients said. “Parents will be able to schedule appointments at convenient sites they know and trust to get their kids vaccinated.”

For this program, the vaccinations for kids, which include just a third of the vaccine dose administered to adults in two separate injections, will not be administered at mass vaccination centers but rather at pediatric clinics and pharmacies.

The US government’s aim is for the immunization of these minors to be handled more efficiently than that of adults, that program having been launched 10 months ago but being marked by the scarcity of doses that forced many people to wait to receive the available vaccine.

The announcement of the plan to vaccinate 5-11-year-olds comes just days after the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to the program and before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meeting scheduled for this week to discuss the plan to provide the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to this cohort of minors.

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