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Officials from the Health and Human Services Department and Pentagon are holding a joint briefing Wednesday on the Trump administration’s Covid-19 vaccine program Operation Warp Speed as more Americans receive their first shots.
More than 4.8 million people in the U.S. have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine as of Tuesday at 9 a.m. ET, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number is a far cry from the federal government’s goal to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 and 50 million Americans by the end of this month.
Late last month, U.S. officials acknowledged vaccine distribution has been slower than they had hoped. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told STAT News on Tuesday that she expects vaccine rollout to speed up “pretty massively” in the coming weeks.
“It’s the early stages of a really complicated task, but a task that we’re up for,” she told STAT.
Read CNBC’s live updates to see the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.
