WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US President Joe Biden will announce new steps to slow the spread of COVID-19 before the UN General Assembly meets, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said.
Murthy did not specify what those steps would be. The next session of the General Assembly opens Tuesday; the first day of general debate will be the following week.
Murthy defended Biden’s efforts to expand vaccination in the United States.
“There will be more actions that we continue to work on, especially in the global front,” he said.
Biden on Thursday said he would require federal workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and mandate that large employers either require their workers to be vaccinated or regularly tested.
Biden said the United States had donated 140 million vaccine doses to other countries. “That’s American leadership on a global stage, and that’s just the beginning,” he said.
The United States has administered 380,241,903 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning and distributed 456,755,755 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those figures are up from the 379,472,220 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Sept 11, out of 456,755,075 doses delivered.
The agency said 209,437,152 people had received at least one dose while 178,692,875 people are fully vaccinated as of 6 a.m. ET on Sunday.
The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.
About 1.78 million people received an additional dose of either Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine since Aug 13, when the US authorised a third dose of the vaccines for people with compromised immune systems who are likely to have weaker protection from the two-dose regimens. — NNN-AGENCIES
