Officials said the U.S. is now vaccinating 1.7 million Americans daily, up from less than a million last month.
The White House announced new efforts Wednesday to expand and improve testing for the coronavirus, as the United States ramps down efforts to vaccinate Americans.
In a press release, Carole Johnson, the country’s new COVID-19 test coordinator, announced that the federal government would invest $ 1.6bn to increase nationwide testing.
“We need to test extensively and swiftly to reverse the tide of this pandemic but we still don’t have enough testing and we don’t have enough testing everywhere we need to be,” he said. Johnson at a press conference.
Health and Human Services will establish regional coordination test centers to organize the circulation of COVID-19 test supplies and partners with laboratories across the country, including universities and commercial laboratories to the effort to do [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]
She said the money would support tests in schools and in insufficient numbers, increase the production of diagnostic test materials, as well as increase genomic sequences – crucial in examining changes. virus.
According to an information page in the White House, $ 650m will go towards expanding test capacity for schools, which will help them in reopening.
The effort will also focus on inadequate situations, such as homeless shelters.
According to the information sheet, Health and Human Services will establish regional coordination test centers to organize the circulation of test supplies and laboratory partners across the country, including universities and commercial laboratories. to make the effort possible.
“We are rapidly deploying targeted resources as time is of the essence when it comes to these rapid changes,” she said.
According to the factsheet, some $ 200m will go toward identifying, tracking, and reducing strains of emerging coronavirus through genome sequences.
“Genomic order testing is how we see changes early before they spread,” Jeffrey Zients, White House coronavirus coordinator, said during the press conference, “so we need to invest heavily and ramp up tests throughout the country. “
Officials said $ 650m will go toward expanding test capacity for schools, which will help them in reopening [Allison Dinner/Reuters]
On Wednesday, officials also announced that the country now vaccinates an average of 1.7 million Americans per day, up from less than a million months ago.
New figures from the White House show a steady increase in vaccination speeds in the first month of President Joe Biden in office.
Much of the increase, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, comes from people receiving the second dose of the approved vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer.
The pace of first-dose vaccines has been relatively stable over the past several weeks, averaging around 900,000 views per day.
Biden is on track to surpass his goal of 100 million injections in his first 100 days in office – although the build-up pace will take even longer to meet his plans to almost vaccinate all adults before the end of the summer.