White House: More than one million vaccine doses administered in past 24 hours

More than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the past 24 hours, according to the White House, including more than 550,000 first doses. 

Thursday marks the first time there have been at least 1 million doses administered in close to seven weeks, White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar said in a tweet.

Thursday just in: +1.02M doses reported administered, including 562K newly vaccinated. First 1M day reported in nearly seven weeks! 31% week-over week increase in the daily average of people completing their vaccine series, maximizing their protection against Delta.

— Cyrus Shahpar (@cyrusshahpar46) August 19, 2021

It is also a 31 percent week-over-week increase in the daily average number of people completing their vaccine series.

The numbers show the vaccination rate is increasing across the country after weeks of stagnating at about 500,000 per day. Vaccinations had slowed down after hitting a peak in mid-April of about 3.3 million doses per day. 

But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just under 60 percent of the entire eligible U.S. population is fully vaccinated, indicating the U.S. still has progress to make to combat the virus, especially as cases, hospitalizations and deaths have surged across the country. 

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines would be available starting the week of Sept. 20 after concluding that a third shot is needed to fight off waning immunity.

Concern over the delta variant has led to some people taking matters into their own hands and getting an unauthorized booster dose. The CDC has only recently begun tracking unauthorized boosters, and the data hasn’t been separated from the total figures.

According to initial data, about 1.14 million Americans who received two mRNA shots got one or more additional doses, and about 91,000 people who received a single Johnson & Johnson dose got themselves an unauthorized additional dose.