U.S. President Joe Biden secured a commitment from Pfizer Inc. to double the Covid-19 vaccine the company churns out in the coming weeks, putting his goal to fill the country’s inoculation stockpile by summer in sight.
The U.S. coronavirus death toll topped 400,000 on Jan. 19, according to a Reuters tally, as the country hardest hit by the pandemic struggled to meet the demand for vaccines to stem the spread of infection.
With both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration awaiting potential Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), airlines are preparing their cargo operations to ship the vaccines.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams pleaded with Americans to grasp “the severity of the moment” and remain vigilant against the coronavirus pandemic, as record hospitalizations pushed healthcare professionals to the brink.
The U.S. death toll from Covid-19 surpassed a grim new milestone of 250,000 lives lost as New York City’s public school system – the nation’s largest – called a halt to in-classroom instruction, citing a jump in coronavirus infection rates.
The city of Philadelphia will ban indoor gatherings altogether and the nearby state of New Jersey will strictly limit their size as U.S. officials struggle to slow a Covid-19 surge that could overwhelm hospitals and kill thousands.
The United States recorded more than 1 million new Covid-19 cases in the past week as new infections rose in every state except for Hawaii, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.
Chicago’s mayor issued a month-long stay-at-home advisory, and Detroit’s public schools called a halt to in-person instruction to curb the spread of the coronavirus as more than a dozen U.S. states reported a doubling of new Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks.
The United States set a one-day record for new coronavirus cases with at least 102,591 new infections and as hospitals in several states reported a rising tide of patients, according to a Reuters tally.
The number of new Covid-19 cases in the United States hit another record high, rising 18% week-over-week to more than 575,000, while deaths inched up 3%, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports.
