US Vaccine Delivery Tops 100 Million as Concern Over Variants Surges

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 3, 6:01AM EST · Published Mar 2, 6:43PM EST

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US Vaccine Delivery Tops 100 Million as Concern Over Variants Surges — © Leon Neal / Getty Images News via Getty Images

According to the CDC, 102,353,940 doses of vaccines have been delivered in the U.S. Of these, 78,631,601 have been administered. A total of 15.6% of Americans have been given at least one dose of vaccine. Another 7.9% have been given two doses.

As the dose distribution level rose above 100 million, the milestone was bracketed between two other pieces of news. Enough vaccine will be available for all U.S. adults by May 31, as Merck begins to help Johnson & Johnson manufacture vaccine doses. However, worry about the rapid spread of variants has caused public health officials to talk about a fourth national surge in cases.

The 100 million dose delivery level has been a long time coming when considered in light of what the Trump Administration said would occur in the first part of the year. Competition with other nations for doses and a poorly planned role out of the national vaccination process pushed timelines back for weeks or more. The most recent plan by the Biden Administration was to have 200 million doses available by July. The recent approval of the J&J vaccine and the aid from Merck has helped improve that timeline.

There are three variants the CDC reports upon on its public website. Scientists say at least another two have appeared in New York State and California. The B.1.1.7 variant, B.1.351 variant, and P.1 variant have been reported in at least 46 states according to the CDC. Almost half of these are in New York State, Florida, California, and Michigan. According to a report by Ars Technica about the B.1.1.7 variant, “As expected, it has continued spreading and now accounts for an estimated 10 percent of cases nationwide, up from an estimated 1 to 4 percent a few weeks ago.” The CDC believes it could be the predominant variant by the end of March.

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Adding to the concerns of public health officials, the Governor of Texas has dropped the state’s mask mandate and plans to reopen the entire state by March 10 when businesses can operate at full capacity. Other states plan to follow with partial reopenings and changes in mask mandates.

The 100 million dose level is indeed a major milestone, but the battle to arrest the disease is far from over. These are the states where the most people are refusing vaccines.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.