Washington: US Vice President Mike Pence became the highest profile world leader to be vaccinated for the coronavirus Friday.
Pence’s wife Karen and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also received shots on live television.
President Donald Trump’s administration helped deliver vaccinations against the coronavirus earlier than even some in his administration thought possible, launching Operation Warp Speed — the government campaign to help swiftly develop and distribute vaccines — this spring with great fanfare in the White House Rose Garden.
But five days into the largest vaccination campaign in the nation’s history, Trump has held no public events to trumpet the rollout. He hasn’t been inoculated himself.
He has tweeted only twice about the shot. Pence, meanwhile, has taken center stage — touring a vaccine production facility this week and receiving a dose himself on live television Friday morning.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both said Thursday that they will get vaccinated in the next few days.
Pence, along with his wife, Karen, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams, received their shots Friday morning in an office suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from three medical technicians from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Meanwhile, with the national case count topping 17.1 million, the death toll across the US amounted to 310,095.
New York State registered 36,052 fatalities, at the top of the US state-level death toll list. Texas recorded the second most deaths, which stood at 24,932. The states of California, Florida and New Jersey all confirmed more than 18,000 deaths, the CSSE tally showed.
States with more than 10,000 fatalities also include Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts and Georgia.
The US remains the nation hit the worst by the pandemic, with the world’s highest caseload and death toll, accounting for more than 18 per cent of the global deaths.
US Covid-19 deaths soared above 300,000 on December 14, and added 10,000 in just three days.