The U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues to lag but is accelerating

Some 20.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered as of Jan. 23 — roughly in line with the CDC’s end-of-2020 goal. 

The pace of vaccination as of the morning of Jan. 21 was roughly 1 million, about four-fifths involving initial doses of the two-dose vaccine. The daily pace ticked up to 1.4 million on Jan. 24 with 1.1 million of those initial doses. 

For the sake of comparison, COVID-19 tests were 1.9 million on the same day. 

At the current vaccination rate, vaccinating the majority of Americans could occur by January 2022, according to an analysis from The Wall Street Journal.  

It is likely, however, that the pace will continue to quicken as a growing number of organizations become involved in administering shots. Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE:JNJ) could also file for emergency use authorization for a single-dose vaccine as early as February. 

President Biden has also promised that the U.S. would hit a pace of 1.5 million doses administered per day.

At present, UBS estimates that 4.6% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccines from Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)/BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX). 

According to official records, some 25 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19. 

In general, anywhere from 50% to 90% of a population needs immunity — either from natural infections or vaccines — to achieve herd immunity.