Half of U.S. population fully vaccinated against COVID-19: CDC

[August 07, 2021]    (Reuters) - One out of two Americans were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Friday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People wait in line to receive a dose of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a Florida Department of Health in a Pinellas County vaccination event held at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S., August 6, 2021. REUTERS/Octavio Jones

The milestone comes roughly eight months after the United States launched its mass vaccination drive.

The agency said 165,918,256 people, or 50% of the total U.S. population was fully vaccinated, while 182,368,493 people, or 70.6% of the adult population, in the country had received at least one dose.

The United States had administered 349,787,479 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 405,102,715 doses.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday.

(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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