"If you're unvaccinated… some will die, needlessly die," President Biden says.
President Joe Biden has announced a doubling of US government purchases of new Pfizer therapeutic pills designed to combat the worst effects of Covid-19, as alarm grows over explosive increase in coronavirus cases.
At a meeting with his White House pandemic response team on Tuesday, Biden said the new order will take the stockpile to 20 million from 10 million pills.
"These pills are going to dramatically decrease hospitalisations and deaths," he said. "We already placed the largest order in the world. Now I'm doubling that order."
The FDA regulatory body granted emergency use authorization on December 22 for Pfizer's Paxlovid tablets.
The initial government purchase of 10 million antiviral treatments, which are aimed at those facing a high-risk from Covid-19, cost $5.3 billion.
The United States, like other countries around the world, is seeing a huge surge in infections from the Covid Omicron variant. So far, also in keeping with data internationally, the strain seems mostly only to cause serious illness in those who have not been vaccinated.
"This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Biden said.
"Be concerned about Omicron but don't be alarmed," he added. However, "if you're unvaccinated… some will die, needlessly die."
Over 1 million cases
The United States reported more than one million new Covid-19 cases on Monday after the long New Year's weekend, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as the Omicron variant spread at a blistering pace.
There were 1,080,211 new cases in the country, a global record, although the number of cases reported on a Monday is usually higher than other days because of delays in weekend tallying, especially after such a three-day holiday weekend.
Still, the figure is double the number of daily cases compared to the previous Monday.
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