December 9, 2021
The United States reached a significant milestone late Wednesday, with more than 200 million people now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus — about 60 percent of the population.
In the past week, an average of 1.92 million doses per day were administered — a 35 percent increase over the week before — according to data from The Washington Post’s tracker.
However, the achievement comes as the nation’s tallies of daily deaths and new cases rose in the past week and hospitalization rates jumped by 10 percent. The looming threat of the newly identified omicron variant of the coronavirus also hangs over the country as it enters the holiday season.
Omicron cases have been detected in 21 states so far, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker, most recently in Texas on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization, drug companies and U.S. health officials have so far said omicron may prove more transmissible than previous variants but potentially cause milder cases of covid-19. However, they have issued strong caveats, saying the data is preliminary and research is ongoing to find out more about the variant, with no firm conclusions yet drawn.
Read more at The Washington Post.