Amid growing concerns about the slow rollout of the coronavirus vaccine in the United States, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office says that more than 125,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered so far in the state.
According to the latest figures, 126,211 doses have been administered statewide since they were first delivered earlier this month.
The state has thus far received 108,225 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, with 161,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine also shipped to the state so far. Those numbers do not include the doses that have been sent to the city of Chicago, according to officials.
According to Bloomberg, of the 124,425 doses of the vaccine that Chicago has received so far, just 20,353 have been administered to patients, reflective of a growing problem where doses of the vaccine could potentially expire before they are administered.
An NBC News analysis shows similar issues on the national level. Operation Warp Speed is hoping to vaccinate approximately 80% of the country’s 330.7 million residents by the end of June, and to meet that goal, an average of more than 3 million people would have to get the shots each day.
Thus far, only 2 million Americans, most of them front-line health care workers, have gotten their shots out of the 11.5 million doses that have been delivered, meaning that approximately 17.4% of the doses that have been delivered have actually been administered thus far.
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President-elect Joe Biden blasted President Donald Trump’s administration for their rollout of the vaccine, calling it a “travesty” that must be reversed quickly.
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind, far behind,” Biden said in a speech Tuesday. “As I long feared and warned, the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should.”
The federal government was aiming to vaccinate approximately 20 million people by year’s end, but only 11.5 million doses have been delivered, with just over 2 million having been administered.
Biden has said he will invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up materials to produce and deliver the vaccine, and has said he aims to inoculate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.
Trump fired back at criticism of his administration’s efforts, saying that Operation Warp Speed has lived up to its promise to deliver the treatment to states.
“It is up to the states to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the federal government,” the president said in a social media post.
