Covid Vaccines Update
- Theresa Chen
- Mar 2, 2021
- 2 min read
By- Christie Peng
Vaccine Numbers
After a week of declines brought about by severe weather, the number of new vaccinations has started to increase in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and federal data quantified that the federal government administered an average of 1.45 million vaccines every day. Although the speed of vaccinations is delivered quickly, the winter storm disrupted shipping nationwide and closed vaccination sites in the South and Midwest. On February 25, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly 68.3 million doses and 50 million shots of vaccine had been administered across the United States. At an event in Washington, President Biden announced one of his goals for the new year: 100 million shots in his first 100 days. Months later, he described the historic vaccination as the
“greatest operational challenge this country’s ever undertaken.”
Vaccine Study
A nationwide study conducted in February found important differences in the two ways in which children have become seriously ill from COVID-19. The study analyzed 1116 cases of young people treated at 66 hospitals in 31 states. 539 children had Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a syndrome that children experienced after having a mild initial infection. Also, the study found that more than two-thirds of COVID-19 patients were either Black or Hispanic. Hispanic young people were equally likely to be at risk for both MIS-C and acute COVID-19 and Black children were at a greater risk for developing the inflammatory syndrome than the acute illness. These statistics reflect socioeconomic factors that have disproportionately affected certain communities greater than others. Dr. Jean A. Ballweg, a medical director at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, acknowledged that there were racial disparities in healthcare.
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