U.S. vaccination rate hits the highest pace in weeks

The rate of COVID-19 vaccinations in the United States continues to rise, a positive sign amid skyrocketing cases and hospitalizations after weeks of lagging inoculations.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sunday that 816,203 additional doses were administered, the fifth straight day the agency recorded more than 700,000 shots in arms. That brings the total number of doses administered to 346,456,669, according to the CDC numbers released Sunday.

The seven-day average of administered doses is now 662,529 per day, the highest average since July 7.

Additionally, Sunday was the third day in a row that the seven-day average of people getting their first shots topped 400,000. The last time that metric was over 400,000 was the July Fourth weekend.

That's still less than a quarter of the peak in mid-April, when nearly 2 million people were getting their first shot each day.

If the U.S. picked up vaccinations to the April pace, it would take only a month and a half to reach all eligible people.

Per CDC data released Sunday, 168.4 million people are fully vaccinated, or 49.6% of the U.S. population. Among vaccine-eligible Americans -- meaning those who are 12 and older -- 58.1% are fully vaccinated.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, hopes the recent surge in cases driven by the Delta variant is changing the minds of the vaccine hesitant, he told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday. Collins noted that in the last two weeks, vaccination rates have increased 56% nationally.

"This may be a tipping point for those who have been hesitant to say, 'OK, it's time,'" Collins said. "I hope that's what's happening. That's what desperately needs to happen if we're going to get this Delta variant put back in its place."

Overall, the seven-day average of people becoming fully vaccinated each day is at 247,385 people per day.

Twenty states have now fully vaccinated more than half of their residents, including Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state, as well as Washington, DC.

On the other hand, the states with the lowest percentage of their population vaccinated are Alabama and Mississippi, which have 34% and 35% of their residents vaccinated, respectively.

Correction: An earlier version of this story and headline gave the wrong timing for when the doses were administered. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the additional doses Sunday, but it's not clear when they were all administered.

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