“It really, again, is going to be up to our nation’s governors, but with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, we’ll have, as I said, as many as 100 (million) shots in arms by the end of February,” he told NBC on Monday.
“If we get the Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca vaccine approved in January, when their data comes in, we’ll have significant additional supplies,” Azar added. “Late February, in the March time period, I think you’ll start seeing much more like a flu vaccination campaign — people going into their Kroger, their CVS, or Walgreens, Walmart.”
Returning to normality, officials have said, will depend on how quickly vaccinations happen — and how many Americans get vaccinated. About 70% to 80% of the American public needs to be immune to the virus before it is “gone,” according to Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health.
“We think we can get there by June or so for almost all of the 330 million Americans who are interested in getting this vaccine,” Collins told NBC on Sunday. “But if only half of them do so, this could go on and on and on.”
Difficult months are ahead
In the meantime, the US is preparing to face some of the pandemic’s darkest days yet. in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that while the vaccines offered a moment of hope, he added “we are in the midst of the worst moment of this pandemic.”
The state added more than 30,000 new Covid-19 cases for the fourth straight day and hospitalizations and ICU admissions are at all-time highs.
Los Angeles County health officials
said Monday new cases have increased 625% since November 1, with “younger people continuing to drive the increase in community transmission.”
More than 4,200 people are hospitalized with Covid-19, officials said, and 21% of those are in the ICU.
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