The White House COVID-19 Response Team says the Biden administration is off to a very strong start with the Covid-19 vaccine booster campaign and that booster doses are well tolerated. <\/p>\n
About 2.78 million people have received an additional booster dose so far, Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a routine press conference on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
U.S. health<\/span> workers began administering booster shots on Friday, immediately after the FDA and CDC recommended that certain populations receive a booster shot of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine at least 6 months after completion of their two-dose course of the same vaccine.<\/p>\n The recipients included President Joe Biden, who got inoculated with a vaccine booster shot on Monday.<\/p>\n COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that over the past weekend, at pharmacies alone, more than 400,000 Americans received the additional protection of a booster, and almost 1 million people have already scheduled their booster shots through pharmacies over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n Massachusetts and several other states are reaching out to millions of eligible individuals via text messages and email.<\/p>\n New Jersey is opening three mass vaccination centers to give booster shots.<\/p>\n The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service are getting thousands of booster shots in arms each day.<\/p>\n CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said both the FDA and CDC reviewed data on the safety of booster shots, including for those who are 18 to 64. A new MMWR report shows that COVID-19 vaccine booster doses are well tolerated so far.<\/p>\n “The frequency and type of side effects were similar to those seen after the second vaccine doses and were mostly mild or moderate and short-lived,” she told reporters.<\/p>\n Walensky said that the seven-day average of new Covid cases in the U.S. is about 95,000 per day. The seven-day average of hospital admissions is approximately 8,500 per day, and the seven-day average of daily deaths is 1,300 per day.<\/p>\n With 111,162 new Covid infections recorded on Tuesday, the national total reached 43,232,152, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.<\/p>\n An additional 2,543 Covid deaths took the total number of people who died due to the pandemic to 693,069.<\/p>\n