The Health 202: Biden’s vaccination goal sounds ambitious. It’s actually pretty realistic.

That all may sound ambitious. But, like Biden’s previous vaccination goal of 100 million immunizations in 100 days, this one is also within the realm of possibility – reflecting the president’s inclination to underpromise while aiming to over-deliver.

So far, around 97 million shots have been administered in the U.S., resulting in 64.1 million people getting at least one shot, with half of them fully vaccinated.

At the current rate of 2.2 million shots administered per day, 110 million more shots would be administered between now and May 1, which is when Biden is directing states to open eligibility widely. Depending on how many are first shots compared to second shots, that could put the number of partly or fully vaccinated Americans well over 100 million. It’s feasible to think that half or more of all 260 American adults may have at least one vaccine shot within the next seven weeks or so.

Biden also based his May targets on Moderna and Pfizer projections that their manufacturing will scale up in the next few weeks, along with promised new shipments of the recently-approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only a single dose.

“In a contract secured last year by the Trump administration, Johnson & Johnson committed to delivering 100 million doses of its one-shot vaccine by the end of June — and 87 million by the end of May,” Dan Diamond and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. “It is now expected to deliver slightly more in that time frame, after senior Biden administration officials pressured one of its subcontractors to put more resources into bottling the product.”

The bulk of the supply needed to cover the adult population by May will come from Pfizer and Moderna. “The companies had originally set targets for July and June, respectively, for doses sufficient to cover 100 million people each. But federal officials familiar with their operations say these were conservative estimates that didn’t reflect steady improvements in production,” my colleagues write.

“Pfizer, for instance, had been indicating for several months it could scale to more than 13 million doses a week, according to one federal official — a rate that, if maintained, would easily allow it to supply 80 million doses in April and May, after delivering 120 million by the end of March. The company also won approval in January to count six doses in each of its vials, rather than five.”

“Let me be clear, that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to have that shot immediately, but it means you’ll be able to get in line beginning May 1,” he said. “Every adult will be eligible to get their shot.”

The states have taken similar approaches to making people eligible for shots, although they’ve worked their way through priority tiers at different paces, depending on how quickly they were able to administer vaccines. Senior administration officials said Biden has the authority through the Department of Health and Human Services to require states to open up eligibility for everyone. They stressed that it won’t be merely a suggestion, but rather a directive states need to abide by.

Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Biden lamented the pandemic’s huge toll on Americans and laid out where he hopes to go from here.

He ticked through a series of new actions he intends to take to combat the virus in the spring and summer, including creating a “find a vaccination” website and allowing dentists, veterinarians and other health professionals to administer doses. He announced new efforts to open vaccination sites, allow more people to administer the vaccines, get kids back in schools and ease the process of finding where to get a shot.

Atlantic writer James Hamblin:

“Biden’s speech, clocking in at 24 minutes, served as an inflection point on the 51st day of his presidency,” Sean Sullivan writes. “The president had spent his first few weeks carefully managing expectations for recovery and frequently blaming the Trump administration for many of its early challenges, criticisms he renewed indirectly on Thursday night. But Biden took greater ownership of the pandemic battle — and exposed himself to a potential backlash if he does not deliver.”

“If we do our part, if we do this together, by July Fourth, there’s a good chance you, your family and friends can gather in your backyard and have a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day,” Biden said. “After this long hard year, that will make this Independence Day something truly special, where we not only mark our independence as a nation, we begin to mark our independence from this virus.”

Business Insider reporter Jake Lahut:

The president promised to double the number of pharmacies getting the shipments, to 20,000 locations around the country. 

The aim of the initiative, which includes 21 participating pharmacy chains, is to get shots into arms faster without going through the states first. Under a system set up under the Trump administration, much of the supplies have gone to states to distribute — an approach that has worked better in some states than others. The Biden administration hasn’t dismantled that system, but has tried to supplement it with the direct shipments to pharmacies.

Scott Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration under President Donald Trump, praised that approach in a Post Live interview yesterday, saying it was a “difficult” decision to make. Bypassing states wasn’t a popular idea with state governors, but it was a good decision, Gottlieb said.

“There’s probably some political grumbling from some quarters about the federal government making a decision to do that,” Gottlieb said. “I think it was the right decision.”

Shipments are also going to community health centers, which serve millions of low-income Americans who could otherwise have trouble gaining access. 

The administration said it will start sending vaccines directly to 950 such centers, up from 250 centers who were receiving shipments initially. Some of the community health centers will also be sending out mobile vans to deliver services in the hardest-to-reach communities.

The Senate voted 51 to 48 to allow for floor debate on Becerra’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, with Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) the sole GOP senator to vote to advance the nomination, The Post’s Amy Goldstein reports.

The final confirmation vote is likely to take place next week. Collins’s support, along with that of moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), almost guarantees that the outcome of the final vote will be in his favor. 

Thursday’s procedural vote came after the Senate Finance Committee deadlocked on advancing Becerra’s nomination, requiring Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to bring a vote to the full Senate to force the nomination out of committee.

Becerra’s nomination faces strong opposition from GOP lawmakers who have criticized his record on abortion and his support in the past for Medicare-for-all. 

The insistence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on spacing schoolchildren six feet apart has quickly emerged as one of the most controversial elements of the school reopening debate, The Post’s Karin Brulliard reports.

Many schools across the country have been relying on a shorter distance of three feet, the minimum endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization. Some experts say that six feet of distancing is unnecessary if other mitigation measures are in place.

“Six-foot, strict social distancing in most districts means you can’t bring everyone back into the building, and you will be in some sort of remote learning … it’s ginning up to becoming one of the major flash points,” said Benjamin P. Linas, a Boston University associate professor of epidemiology and infectious-diseases doctor who last month joined 300 experts to urge Massachusetts’s education commissioner to stick with three feet.

That argument that was bolstered on Wednesday by a new study, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, that found similar coronavirus case rates of students and staff in 48 Massachusetts districts that adopted a three-foot distancing minimum and 194 that opted for six.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, released a report Thursday based on data from 130 studies on coronavirus transmission in schools. The report found that schools do not appear to drive community transmission and that a lack of in-person instructions can contribute to health risks due to missed health screenings, food insecurity and mental health challenges.

The doses are awaiting the results of U.S. clinical trials, which will determine whether they receive emergency use authorization by the FDA. Meanwhile, at least 70 countries have already approved the vaccine and many are desperate to increase their supply of vaccines.

“The fate of those doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the subject of an intense debate among White House and federal health officials, with some arguing the administration should let them go abroad where they are desperately needed while others are not ready to relinquish them, according to senior administration officials,” the New York Times’s Noah Weiland and Rebecca Robbins report.

AstraZeneca has asked the Biden administration to let it loan doses to the European Union, where it has fallen short of its supply commitments, but the request has so far been denied. 

Some officials have discussed sending doses to Brazil, which has been hit hard by the virus; the European Union; or the United Kingdom. But the administration also seems to be hesitant to share the doses, in part out of concern that unforeseen challenges in vaccine production could cause the United States to fall short of Biden’s goal of having enough vaccine for every American adult by late May. 

A coronavirus vaccine developed by Maryland biotechnology company Novavax appeared to be 96 percent effective against the original strain of the virus, on par with the most effective authorized vaccines, according to an analysis released by the company, The Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson reports.

The vaccine was somewhat less effective, however, in preventing mild or moderate covid-19 caused by new variants of the virus, although it protected fully against severe covid-19.

The vaccine was 86 percent effective in preventing covid-19 caused by the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom. In South Africa, where a variant called B.1.351 has become dominant, the vaccine was only 55 percent effective in preventing covid-19 in people who did not have HIV.

The company will present the findings to regulatory agencies worldwide, including the FDA. A 30,000-person test of the vaccine is ongoing in the United States and Mexico, Carolyn writes.

Two ads released on Thursday featured former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter urging Americans to get vaccinated. 

Trump did not appear in the ads, despite the fact that he and his wife, Melania Trump, were vaccinated in January. Trump has often boasted about his role in spurring production of the vaccines, but he did little to forcefully advocate that Americans get a vaccine during his time in office. Last month, he finally recommended that Americans get a vaccine during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Ad Council told ABC News that the ads were shot at Biden’s inauguration, which Trump did not attend.

• Covid-19 cases in immunocompromised patients with cancer and HIV may play a role in the emergence of new variants of the virus, The Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha reports. Some hospitalized patients with weakened immune systems were found to have mutating viruses months before the variants were discovered in the outside world.
   
• Coronavirus shutdowns may have resulted in an increase in lead poisoning, as lead screenings for children dropped off and more kids were confined at home, where lead exposure can be particularly high, the New York Times’s Emily Anthes reports.

The court’s decision comes after the Biden administration asked the justices to put the case on hold while it reviewed the policy, the Hill’s John Kruzel reports. The administration indicated in a court brief that the Trump-era policy to allow states to impose work requirements for Medicaid recipients would soon be dropped because it conflicts with Biden’s goal of providing health care to low-income people. Arguments had been slated for March 29 but were removed from the calendar.