White House says daily vaccination rate is rising among Americans getting 1st jab

A teenager receives a COVID-19 vaccine.
(Image credit: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

White House officials on Tuesday said the United States is making "critical progress" with vaccinating Americans against COVID-19, as the daily number of people receiving their first dose of a vaccine has jumped by more than 70 percent since mid-July.

White House COVID-19 Response Team Coordinator Jeff Zients said an average of 450,000 Americans a day are getting their first vaccine dose, an increase from 260,000 about a month ago, The Washington Post reports. This is good news in the face of the highly contagious Delta variant, Zients said, which is the predominant COVID strain in the U.S.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.