10%: The White House estimated Wednesday that nearly 10% of children aged 5 to 11 have received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine. More than 2.6 million children are expected to have gotten their first shot by the end of the day, including 1.7 million just last week.
“Just 10 days into our program being in full strength, we’re at 10% of kids,” said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. “For perspective, it took about 50 days for us to reach 10% of adults with one shot. And when the polio vaccine was first rolled out for kids in the 1950s it took about three months to cross two and a half million shots in arms.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that about 80% of Americans aged 12 and older have received at least one shot, with about 300,000 people a day now getting their first dose. That means that some 57 million Americans aged 12 and up remain unvaccinated, including about 47 million adults.
100,000: More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the 12 months ending in April, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics. It’s the first time overdose deaths have topped 100,000 a year. Overdose deaths have more than doubled since early 2015 and reportedly now account for more lives lost in a year than car crashes and gun fatalities combined.
