The United States death toll has topped the 350,000 mark. In the coming weeks, health officials expect the total to grow following the holiday season.
Confirmed coronavirus cases have also continued to rise. For more than four weeks straight, there have been 100,000 confirmed cases throughout the United States. New York, Texas, California and Florida have all topped one million confirmed COVID-19 cases. Globally, 85 million confirmed cases have been counted.
In an effort to fight the spread of the virus, Operation Warp Speed has begun distributing COVID-19 vaccines. Thus far, two million Americans have been vaccinated, but that total falls far shorter than the 20 million experts had hoped for.
“We would have liked to have seen it run smoothly and have 20 million doses into people today by the end of the 2020, which was the projection,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said.
“Obviously, it didn’t happen, and that’s disappointing.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci hopes that future assistance of local governments will kickstart the process and help make up for lost time.
“There really has to be a lot more effort in the sense of resources for the locals, namely, the states, the cities, the counties, the places where the vaccine is actually going into the arms of individuals,” he added.