Eleven-year-old Victoria Stout will receive the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on November 3, 2021 at the Rady’s Children’s Hospital Vaccination Clinic in San Diego, California.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Covid vaccinations rose on Wednesday and Thursday as a rising number of states confirmed their first cases of the highly mutated Omicron variant.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nearly 2.2 million firearms were reported to the agency over a 24-hour period through Thursday, the highest total in a day since May.
About half of those shots were booster doses, Cyrus Shahpar, White House data director of Covid-19, wrote in a tweet Thursday, and nearly a third were first doses or people receiving their very first syringes. About 4.8 million shots were reported on Monday, but that number represents data from a few days during the long Thanksgiving weekend, according to the CDC.
US health officials have been enforcing vaccines year-round for the past few months through a public campaign and vaccine mandates for certain workers. On Monday, the CDC tightened its recommendation on Covid booster vaccinations and informed all adults that, given the growing concern about the newly identified variant of Omicron, they “should” an additional dose.
The CDC approved booster shots for all adults in early November, but the agency is now making its strongest recommendation that adults “should” get an additional vaccination six months after their first Pfizer or Moderna series, or two months after their first Johnson & Johnson shot. .
Vaccination rates have been increasing lately, but at a slower pace. Nearly 60% of Americans are fully vaccinated, according to Thursday’s CDC data. However, it has been almost four months since that value hit the 50% mark in early August. It took the country a little over two months to go from 40% to 50% and less than a month to go from 30% to 40%.
Approximately 70% of Americans have had at least one vaccination, and 21% of fully vaccinated Americans have had a booster vaccination.
In April, after vaccinations were available for the first time, in April vaccinations reached around 3.4 million per day, their highest level in the 7-day average during the summer months. Vaccinations picked up again for Thanksgiving, and passed the average limit of 1.5 million vaccinations a day by mid-November, many of which were booster doses.
The Omicron variant was detected in five US states on Thursday night. The Delta variant remains the dominant variety in the country, accounts for more than 99% of all new cases and drives the number of Covid hospital admissions up again.
The country is far from the peak of the Delta Wave in early September, when more than 100,000 patients were hospitalized with the virus. Still, according to a seven-day average of Health Department data through Thursday, about 57,000 Americans will be hospitalized with Covid, up 10% from the previous week and 22% from the country’s most recent low on Nov. 10.
CNBC’s Spencer Kimball contributed to the coverage.
