The US Targets 100 Million People To Vaccinate COVID-19 By The End Of February

Illustration (Unsplash / Daniel Schludi)

JAKARTA - A high ranking official from the United States (US), Moncef Slaoui, predicts that his country will be able to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to 100 million people by the end of February. He measured it based on the readiness of the government and vaccine developers.

Quoting CNA, Thursday, December 3, Slaoui, who is also an adviser to the US vaccine acceleration program, believes that when vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna-NIH are approved, vaccine availability will be maintained. Every US citizen, said Slaoui, requires two doses of vaccine. While the gap between the first and second doses can be three or four weeks.

"Between mid-December and late February, we have the potential to give vaccines to 100 million people," Slaoui said.

The main target of the 100 million people who will be vaccinated are those who are most at risk of contracting COVID-19. Among them are the elderly, health workers, and the first volunteers for the COVID-19 vaccine.

For this reason, giving the first stage vaccine will be sufficient to reach most health workers. Vaccinations will also be carried out in stages. 20 million in December, 30 million in January, and 50 million in February, bringing the total to 100 million.

The figures above are derived from only two vaccines. Other vaccines such as those worked on by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca-Oxford have not been counted because they are still in the phase III trial process. If that counts, it depends on the emergency approval that will be given by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

So far the US has confirmed 13,937,579 cases of COVID-19 transmission. Among them, there were 272,639 cases died.