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The United States continues to break records in its national vaccination approach. In total, more than 200 million vaccines against the COVID-19 virus have already been administered. The exact number is 202,282,923 vaccines according to The New York Times.
The federal government has so far distributed 258,502,815 vaccines. This means that 78% of the vaccines distributed have been used, a figure that is likely to increase as days go by.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted on its website that about 127.7 million people received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, including an estimated 80.6 million people who were fully vaccinated by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is a single-dose vaccine, or the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses.
According to Cyrus Shapar, Biden’s COVID-19 data director, vaccines administered on Friday, April 16, were more than 3.97 million. According to the CDC, 38.5% of the total population has been vaccinated with “at least one dose”. Fully vaccinated citizens represent almost a quarter of the country at 24.3%.
According to Bloomberg, the average number of vaccines delivered per day in the last week is 3.35 million; a pace that intensified as hospitals, vaccination centers, and the entire healthcare sector adapted to a massive vaccination process that is unprecedented in history.
“The vaccine rollout has been accelerating as supply increases, with the U.S. giving shots to about 1 percent of the population every day (…) It took the U.S. 89 days to administer the first 100 million doses, a milestone reached on March 12. The second 100 million has come in just 36 days.”
If the U.S. maintains this pace, the Biden administration would meet its big goal of administering 200 million vaccines in its first 100 days in office. Under the Trump administration, the United States managed to overcome the first challenges presented by the massive vaccination process such as adapting to the timing of the thawing process of the vaccines to be used, the organization in the distribution, the administration of shifts and appointments, among others.
In fact, before Biden was sworn in, the United States was already the country that had administered the most net doses on the entire planet. Under the Biden administration, the process accelerated and today America is one of the countries with the best performance in terms of dosage supply.
Other countries are trailing the U.S.’s 200 million vaccines
Bloomberg data indicate that some 869,197,491 vaccines have been administered in 155 countries around the globe with an average of 17.4 million doses administered per day. With this, approximately 5% of the global population is already vaccinated against COVID-19.
The United States is the country that has administered the most doses with more than 200 million vaccines administered. China follows with 183,536,000 million, representing 6.6% of its total population. India, on the other hand, is the third country that administered the most doses, 119,787,239, but its percentage is still low for its total population, 4.4%.
The most successful cases in percentage terms are Israel, which has already vaccinated 60% of its total population, including 84% of people over 70 years of age, the United Kingdom (49%) and the United Arab Emirates (44.1%). The United States also has a good percentage compared to other countries, but the big difference is that in Israel and the United Kingdom, for example, there has already been a large decrease in the number of serious cases and deaths. In contrast, in the United States, hospitalizations increased by 8%.
How is the process going in Latin America?
South America is worryingly lagging behind with the vaccination process. Chile is the exception, and the success story, providing almost 13 million vaccines, representing 40% of its total population. Uruguay is also a positive case, administering 1,291,892 doses, for 18.4 % of its total population.
Brazil is the country that vaccinated the most in the region with 34,689,920 inoculated, but its percentage represents only 8.3 % of its total population.
There are countries that are lagging behind. Argentina has administered some 6,093,016 vaccines (6.8% of the total population), Colombia has only vaccinated 3,455,084 people (3.4% of the population), Peru has administered 1,194,056 vaccines, Ecuador 467,626, Bolivia 507,411 and Paraguay 70,100. None of these countries has managed to vaccinate even 3% of its citizens.
Venezuela registers, according to Bloomberg, 230,000 citizens vaccinated, but the figures in that country ruled by the tyranny of Nicolás Maduro are not trustworthy. In any case, the numbers are very low. The World Health Organization reported, for example, that only 98,000 doctors were vaccinated in Venezuela with the Sputnik V vaccine, and in the South American country there are 400,000 workers in the health sector. A similar situation occurs in Cuba and Nicaragua, where the data provided by their regimes are opaque.
On the other hand, Mexico supplied 12,912,963 doses, for 5.1 % of its population. In Central America, the situation is similar to South America. Countries such as Costa Rica have already vaccinated 7.1 % of their citizens; the Dominican Republic has 5.7 % with 1,187,599 vaccines administered; Panama administered 521,392 doses for 6.2 % of its population; El Salvador has low numbers with barely 2 % of its citizens vaccinated and Guatemala has even worse records with 0.4 % of its population inoculated.
In Latin America, in general, the vaccination process is slow and inefficient. The countries that are keeping a good pace can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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