Employer Mandates And Booster Shots Drive Surge In US Vaccination

The total number of Americans getting themselves vaccinated against COVID 19 has almost reached an average of 1 million a day.

There has been a consistent increase in the number of Americans getting Coronavirus vaccines in three months as people with co-morbidities and senior citizens are seeking booster shots and workers have started getting their first doses because of employer and government mandates.

Employer Mandates And Booster Shots Drive Surge In US Vaccination

Some states have started reopening mass vaccination facilities in anticipation of higher demands in the coming weeks if authorities approve the Pfizer vaccine for young children.

Missouri is set to open a mass vaccination facility in a former Toys R Us store on Monday, whereas Virginia is planning to set up nine huge vaccination centers which include Richmond International Raceway in the coming weeks.

Colorado has already opened 4 mass vaccination centers to deal with the surge post the employer mandates in mid-September. Since then, there has been a 38% rise in state-wide vaccinations.

Even though the daily vaccination numbers have steadily gone up for a couple of months, it is still way below the numbers last spring. This surge is mainly due to boosters as almost 10% of the country’s 65 plus population already got their booster shots.

According to Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 data director, 1.1 million doses were administered on Thursday, which included over 306,000 first doses.

Organizers who are putting in the effort to ensure almost 67 million unvaccinated Americans get their vaccines claim that the rise in demand is a combination of the recent approval of Pfizer booster, mandates that have pushed employees to get their shots as well as statistics that prove that almost all COVID 19 death victims are unvaccinated.

Dr. Ricardo Gonzalez-Fisher, who operates a mobile vaccine clinic for Latinos in Colorado said that they have seen people who are getting their shots just to keep their jobs.

He further added that last weekend they administered shots to 30 people outside the Mexican Consulate, Denver, which is a fairly good number.

Dr. Danny Avula, a state vaccine coordinator for Virginia said that opening large vaccination facilities will help ease the burden on local providers by allowing the local health departments to focus on penetrating the underserved communities.

Ryan McKay, who supervises the COVID-19 operations of Blue Ridge Health District said the numbers at a mall in Charlottesville, Virginia had doubled since last week.

He added that the health district has organized mobile clinics in high school football games, basketball tournaments as well as a corner market where 20 shots were delivered in a day, which is a decent success.

U.S Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by at a vaccine center in New Jersey to encourage people to get their vaccines. She said she felt positive about the situation coming under control.

One of Chase Bank’s employees got her Pfizer vaccine on Friday after getting fed up with the twice-a-week testing and filling out online forms daily to report about her health, which is a mandatory requirement of the company.

Around 28 million American children will be eligible for vaccines in November and regulators will soon decide on boosters for those who got Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines.

Jon Mooney, assistant director at the Springfield-Greene County Health Department said they are expecting over 120,000 people to get vaccinated in the coming months.

A surge in vaccination in Louisiana began in August, with the spread of the highly contagious delta variant, according to the state’s health department’s vaccine incentive coordinator Sheree Taillon.