A Record 4.6 MILLION Covid Vaccine Doses Reported in U.S. on Saturday

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

The rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines is picking up steam, as Saturday saw a record high number of 4.6 million Americans reported to have received a dose, jumping the average rate to just over 2.5 million doses a day for the last seven days.

According to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 tracker, a total of 106 million doses have been administered in the U.S. so far, more than the total number of coronavirus infections in the country. Globally, more than 354 million doses have been administered in 121 countries.

Currently, the FDA has approved three Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use authorization (EUA): Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. AstraZeneca has announced that they will be applying for EUA within the next few weeks, after they finish their Phase III trials.

In his first televised address since his inauguration, President Joe Biden said that he would be directing state and local governments to open up eligibility for the vaccine to all Americans by May 1, 2021. The increasing pace of vaccinations  will help to achieve that goal; in fact, numerous political observers assessed Biden’s May 1 goal as possibly too conservative, and an effort to under-promise and over-deliver.

Bloomberg’s health care senior editor Drew Armstrong noted the spike in vaccination reports Saturday, cautioning that it was “a huge number that’s 50% bigger than we’ve ever seen” and they were waiting for data to come in from the next few days to see if this was “a trend or a blip.”

?VACCINE DATA UPDATE (March 13)?

?Record day of reported vaccinations, with 4.6M. 50% higher than past 2.9M record. Looking into why (data dump/lag, +capacity, etc.)

?4.6M doses today; 7-day avg=2.54M/day
??US: 106M doses total

Full graphic/data: https://t.co/B3h4aScyCp pic.twitter.com/2D5hd2BunA

— Drew Armstrong (@ArmstrongDrew) March 13, 2021

⚠️This is a huge number that’s 50% bigger than we’ve ever seen. it’s possible there’s some sort of data/methodological reason for this. We are investigating and will post a blog/more tweets if we find out something more.

In the meantime, <sportscenter voice> THAT’S A BIG ONE

— Drew Armstrong (@ArmstrongDrew) March 13, 2021

Some possibilities:
-Timing of CDC data pull (they were later than usual today)
-FEMA/mass vacc centers bump (operational or data)
-State-specific backlog of data coming in all at once
-Something else….

Ideas/guesses welcome while we try and find out more.

— Drew Armstrong (@ArmstrongDrew) March 14, 2021

So, obviously, *something* is going on here. But it’s still a very big report. Whether it’s data lag or something else, it pushes the 7-day U.S. average (a far more important measure) up substantially.

We’ll see if this is a trend or a blip.

— Drew Armstrong (@ArmstrongDrew) March 13, 2021

Also, FWIW, it’s not a J&J dump (at least not according to the vaccine breakdown CDC has up). That’s only about +315k reported today. pic.twitter.com/ggnR8YoZpl

— Drew Armstrong (@ArmstrongDrew) March 14, 2021

There is sometimes a short delay between when a vaccine is administered and when it is reported, noted Armstrong, so it’s not necessarily true that 4.5 million doses were all given on Saturday, but it is a positive sign that an increasing number of Americans are getting vaccinated.