Half of Americans are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19

• Half of Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the White House said.
• Cyrus Shahpar, the COVID-19 data director, tweeted that the US reached the milestone on Friday.
• The newly vaccinated seven-day average is up 11% from last week and 44% over two weeks, he said.

The US hit a milestone on Friday: Half of Americans are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the White House said.

Cyrus Shahpar, the White House's COVID-19 data director, said in a tweet that 50% of Americans had been inoculated.

-Cyrus Shahpar (@cyrusshahpar46) August 6, 2021

More than 821,000 vaccine doses were reported administered over the previous day's total, including 565,000 first doses, Shahpar said.

He said the seven-day average of new vaccinations was up 11% from last week and up 44% over the past two weeks.

"Keep going!" Shahpar said in the tweet.

Over 3.2 million Americans were newly vaccinated against COVID-19 in the past week, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.

Data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed at midday on Friday that 49.9% of Americans had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

The CDC tracker said that more than 165 million people had been fully vaccinated and that at least 193 million Americans had received at least one dose.

Public-health experts have encouraged everyone 12 and up to get their shots, especially as the more contagious Delta variant spreads across the US, particularly in areas where vaccination rates are low.

On Thursday, the US reported more than 109,000 new COVID-19 cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.