Coronavirus vaccine
Coronavirus vaccineiStock

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it is further increasing the weekly vaccine shipments the federal government sends to states, The Hill reported.

The White House’s COVID-19 response team announced that states will now receive 14.5 million doses starting next week, a jump from 13.5 million.

The team tweeted that the figure is “an increase of almost 70% since we took office just over a month ago.”

The announcement comes a week after the White House announced it was boosting the number of doses being distributed from 11 million to the 13.5 million.

The Biden administration is working to bolster its vaccination efforts in the face of a slew of variants that appear to be more infectious than the original strain of the coronavirus.

On Monday, the COVID-19 death toll in the US topped 500,000, about equal to the population of Kansas City, Missouri, and greater than that of Miami.

President Joe Biden held a moment of silence for the 500,000 dead and in remarks that followed said, “As a nation, we can’t accept such a cruel fate. While we have been fighting this pandemic for so long, we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or on the news. We must do so to honor the dead but, equally important, care for the living, for those left behind.”

Biden urged Americans to keep up the practices of social distancing and mask wearing in order to prevent the further spread of the virus at a time when cases are declining but remain high across the country.