Around 1.8 million Americans received COVID shots last week -IQVIA

By Michael Erman

(Reuters) -Around 1.8 million people in the U.S. received a COVID-19 vaccine during the week ended Sept. 22, according to data compiled by health care data and analytics firm IQVIA Holdings (NYSE:) Inc.

Around 1 million people received the Pfizer/BioNTech shot and just under 800,000 got the Moderna (NASDAQ:) vaccine, Michael Kleinrock, senior research director at the IQVIA institute told Reuters on Friday. He said the data might be missing some shots given at community vaccination sites and doctors’ offices.

“It feels like a good number,” Kleinrock said, noting that over the past two years, the public health emergency and vaccine mandates were helping to drive demand.

“The imperative to be vaccinated was part of the public discussion to a much greater degree,” he said.

The rollout of the shots began in earnest after the U.S. Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended updated shots from the manufacturers on Sept. 12.

The updated shots from are monovalent, or single-target vaccines, aimed at the XBB.1.5 variant of the virus. The XBB.1.5. is an omicron variant that was dominant in the U.S. for much of this year but has since been replaced by other omicron variants.

Data from last year may not represent a perfect comparison, but around two weeks into the autumn campaign of 2022, the U.S. had administered around 1.5 million shots, according to the CDC.