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While the coronavirus continues to ravage the world, an amazing milestone of hope, has been achieved.
According to a report from Dave Lawler at Axiom, more than 1 billion vaccine doses have now been produced.
And the good news is, production continues to ramp up quickly.
While it took several months to reach one billion doses, we should hit two billion by the end of May, according to data from Airfinity, a science information and analytics company.
The latest developments:
- China is the biggest producer and easily the biggest exporter, particularly now that India is curbing exports to fight a brutal second wave.
- Russia, Switzerland, South Korea, Brazil and South Africa are all producing doses but lag behind the five producers on our chart.
- The US has kept nearly all of its supply for domestic use, but expects to become a major exporter once domestic needs are met. The White House has offered few details on that front, though, beyond saying a framework for dose-sharing is in the works.
- The US State Department will increase the number of countries on the “Do Not Travelâ€Â list from 16% of the world to 80% amid the international surge in virus cases.
- India’s devastating outbreak is driving the global coronavirus surge; experts say the latest wave is worse than anything they have seen before.
The US has also administered the most doses to date with 23% of the global total, according to Our World in Data.
It’s neighbor, Canada, is not doing so well — only about 2% have been vaccinated, or about the population of London, Ontario.
The woeful results could mark the end of the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which is expected to face a hotly contested Covid-election in the fall.
As for other vaccination numbers; 21% have come in China, 14% in India, 5% in the UK and 4% in Brazil. The continent of Africa has administered just 1.6% of the total.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that most Americans who haven’t received the coronavirus vaccine say they’re unlikely to get the shots, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll, indicating the country’s mass immunization campaign could soon reach its peak.
Of the unvaccinated adults, 2 in 3 told pollsters they were either “not likely at all†or “not very likely†to get the injections. That proportion has remained level for more than month, polling shows.
Just 14% of unvaccinated Americans said they were likely to get the vaccine.
In total, 44% of respondents said they hadn’t received the vaccine while 56% reported receiving at least one shot, according to the poll.
If those figures don’t significantly change, immunizations could top out around 70% of the adult population.
In the pandemic’s early stages, health experts said herd immunity would require at least 70% of the population to develop resistance to the virus, but that target has become less clear as new, more transmissible coronavirus variants have emerged and cases have become more widespread.
In other developments, Ukraine received the first doses of Covid-19 vaccine shipped via the COVAX Facility, an unprecedented initiative of global solidarity of different countries for global access to Covid-19 vaccines, ReliefWeb reported.
This is the first delivery in the framework of COVAX to Ukraine. Ukraine receives 117,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine free of charge.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) also announced, that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has shipped over 415,000 Moderna and J&J vaccine doses to overseas troops at vaccination sites in 35 countries.
About 15% of those doses were delivered through intermediate distribution facilities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.Â
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