The US will end the year having vaccinated far fewer people against coronavirus than hoped, senior Trump administration officials admitted, with states having used only about a fifth of the doses they were given in the past three weeks.
Officials at US public health agencies said a combination of the holiday season, bad weather and complex vaccine procedures have conspired to result in fewer healthcare workers and care homes residents being vaccinated this year than planned.
Officials had aimed to distribute enough doses to vaccinate 20m people by the end of the year, but recently admitted they were not likely to hit that target until early January after underestimating how long it would take to perform quality control checks on manufactured doses.
Figures released by the federal government, however, show a bigger hurdle is getting the vaccines to people once they have been manufactured and sent out. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday just under 2.6m people in the country had been vaccinated, even though 12.4m doses had been distributed.