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Covid-19 vaccine jab administered by a doctor
Highlights
- US President passes executive orders on vaccinating federal workers
- Biden says his patience is wearing thin with the unvaccinated.
- Meanwhile, a study hints that COVID-19 may have originated in Italy.
US President Joe Biden took a stern position overnight as he pressed for vaccinating million of American amid a surging third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr Biden was seen pressuring private employers to immunise their workforce as well as mandating the shots for federal employees, contractors and health-care workers. The US President also issued an executive order to this effect.
“Despite having an unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months, free vaccines have been available at 80,000 different locations, we still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot,” said a visibly irked Biden.
The US President, seen by many as the most powerful human on the planet, said that he was running out of patience waiting for unvaccinated Americans to get the jabs.
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and the refusal has cost all of us. so please do the right thing,” he added.
The country has reported over two million cases in the last fortnight as the third wave seems to have plateaued.
The country of over 300 million people has been reporting an average of 151,500 new cases per day – around the levels last seen in late January. Also, at an average, 1,500 Americans are dying from COVID-19 every day – the fatality rates last seen in March when the world’s largest economy was coming out of the winter virus surge.
With just 54% of the country’s population fully vaccinated, the Americans have missed Joe Biden’s 4 July 2021 deadline – which aimed at vaccinating seven in every ten Americans by the end of the month.
Since then, the US has administered one dose or more to just 75.3% of Americans 18 and older. In the recent weeks, though, the rate of vaccination has picked up in the country.
In his address to the nation, Mr Biden laid out a six-part plan aimed to get more and more people vaccinated, allow schools to reopen safely, increase testing, improve care for patients and boost the economic recovery.
Where did COVID-19 come from?
A study – which has seen lot of literary criticism from peers – done by researchers in Italy has claimed that COVID-19 had infected people in Italy as early as July 2019. If this holds true, it would debunk the theory that virus came from Wuhan’s seafood market – with index case being reported on 8 December 2019.
Researchers had studied the samples that were collected as part of measles and rubella surveillance in Italy. They reported the detection of evidence of Sars-CoV-2 genetic material in the samples of about 11 subjects taken before the pandemic – with the earliest case going as back as late summer 2019.
