US COVID battle achieves symbolic victory as more people vaccinated than have tested positive

On Monday, the US vaccine effort hit an important milestone, with 26.5 million people having received one, or both doses of the vaccine, whereas 26.3 million people in the country have tested positive for the virus.

The race against COVID in the US has continued to pick up steam, with 1.34 million people being vaccinated every day on average.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly identified the COVID fight as a priority for his early presidency. He has said he wants to vaccinate 100 million Americans against the virus in his first 100 days.

As part of the drive, the US COVID vaccination rate as a proportion of population vaccinated has overtaken Malta’s.

As of 31st January, 6.29 vaccine doses for every 100 people have been administered in Malta, placing the country seventh globally. The US had given 9.4 vaccinations for every 100 people, placing them fifth globally.

Israel continues to lead the world with its vaccine regimen, having given 56.28 doses of the vaccine for every 100 people in the country.

This comes as promising news from Israel reveals that the country’s vaccine rollout has been linked to a fall in infections. Of the nearly 750,000 over 60s that have been vaccinated in the country, only 38 have been hospitalised with the illness.

The EU, which has drawn criticism for its comparatively slow vaccine rollout program, on Monday announced that UK-Swedish vaccine manufacturer, AstraZeneca will provide an additional nine million vaccine doses by March after weeks of debate between the EU and the company.

In Malta, 27,759 vaccine doses have been administered, with 3,948 of these being second doses, which means vaccine doses have already exceeded the total number of cases which as of Monday was 18,027. In fact, Malta reached this milestone more than a week ago, on 22nd January.