The only way the COVID-19 pandemic will be brought to an end is through the massive efforts of vaccine producers and their logistics chains getting doses to healthcare workers and volunteers, who can put them into people.
It’s happened before: with polio, for example. And measles. And smallpox — all diseases that once ravaged populations, brought to heel by vaccinations.
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While the vaccination efforts in the U.S. have received considerable criticism for a haphazard rollout, distribution has been improving and needles are nonetheless getting into arms.
That’s demonstrated with an important milestone that the nation just hit: more Americans have now received at least the first dose of the vaccine than have been confirmed to have been infected with the virus, as Bloomberg reported.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than 26.3 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19 since the first recorded case in January 2020. Now, with vaccinations hitting an average of 1.34 million doses per day, about 26.5 million Americans have received at least their first dose of the vaccine.
To be sure, there’s a lot more to be done.
One Monday alone, the U.S. reported another 130,759 infections and 1,881 virus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. The total death toll in the U.S. stands at 443,355.
Nevertheless, public health experts are taking the milestone as a win. “It’s worth noting that today, for the first time, the data said that more people were vaccinated than were reported as newly diagnosed cases,” University of Southern California microbiology professor Paula Cannon told Bloomberg. “That’s worth celebrating. I’m all for that win.”
But the vaccination efforts are well worth it.
While the U.S. has been one of the most aggressive nations for getting the shots out, a few other nations surpassed their vaccinations-to-case numbers before America, including the U.K., the U.A.E., and Israel.
Indeed, Israel has given the first dose to over half of its population, about five million out of a total of nine million, while more than a million have received both doses and are fully vaccinated, the BBC reported. While the vaccine does take time to have an effect on the body, Israel has already noticed a significant drop in both infections and hospitalizations.
Experts expect the vaccine distribution pace in the U.S. to pick up speed in the coming weeks.
In addition to large-scale community vaccination events, authorities are attempting to get vaccine doses out in other ways as well.
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that the Biden administration “has made this his really top priority to try to smooth all of that out with any number of mechanisms, be it making sure as we get vaccines in, we can get community vaccine centers, get them better allocated to the pharmacies, and even, in some respects, getting mobile units to go out into poorly accessible areas.”
And that’s being undertaken with an even greater sense of urgency with new strains of the virus circulating.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both believed to be effective against the new, more infectious strains now detected in the U.S., NPR reported, which makes it all the more important to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
The Biden administration has set a goal of fully vaccinating 300 million Americans by the end of summer, for which both FEMA and the U.S. military have been mobilized to help, CNN reported.
Fauci is encouraging Americans to “step up to the plate” and continue with distancing and mask wearing, as well as getting vaccinated as soon as eligible. “There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s going to be up to us,” he said.
