Barely one month after it crossed 10 million Covid-19 cases, the United States has reached another grim milestone of 20 million infections.
As at November, the U.S. had 10 million new cases but has doubled in the last month of last year.
That corresponds to about a quarter of all infections recorded worldwide, according to data from the John Hopkins University.
The US also registered over 346,000 coronavirus-related deaths, out of a population of 330 million people.
As of Friday, an estimated 2.8 million vaccine doses have been administered in the US, mostly to frontline healthcare workers as well as staff and residents of care homes.
US Senator Mitt Romney called on the US government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in a national campaign to provide coronavirus vaccinations and slow down the soaring rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths.
German company BioNTech and its US partner Pfizer have announced on their website that they plan to give volunteers who received a placebo in its coronavirus vaccine trial an option to receive a first dose of the vaccine by March 1, 2021, while staying within the study.
The trial allows all participants aged 16 or older the choice to discover whether they were given the placebo, “and for participants who learn they received the placebo, to have the option to receive the investigational vaccine while staying in the study,” they said.
