More than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines shipped within the United States have gone unused, U.S. health officials said on Jan. 4, as the governors of New York and Florida vowed to penalize hospitals that fail to dispense shots quickly.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. expects to start a late-stage U.S. study of the company’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the second quarter of 2021, the drug developer’s chief executive officer said.

Moderna Inc. plans to produce at least 600 million doses of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, up by 100 million doses from the previous forecast, as the United States continues to roll out the vaccine.

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney urged the U.S. government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in an all-out national campaign to administer coronavirus vaccinations and slow a surging rise in Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

New York City aims to vaccinate 1 million residents against the coronavirus by the end of January 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Leading U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci said he foresees America achieving enough collective Covid-19 immunity through vaccinations to regain “some semblance of normality” by autumn 2021, despite early setbacks in the vaccine rollout.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had administered 2,589,125 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the United States as of the morning of Dec. 30 and distributed 12,409,050 doses.

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University will likely be authorized for emergency use in the United States in April 2021, the chief adviser for the U.S. Covid-19 vaccine program said.

The first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was detected in Colorado on Dec. 29 as President-elect Joe Biden warned it could take years for most Americans to be vaccinated against Covid-19 at current distribution rates.

The United States Department of Defense (DOD) awarded Moderna a contract valued at $1,966,598,000 for an additional 100 million doses of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine.