Joe Biden Announces 300 Million Coronavirus Vaccines Have Been Administered

President Joe Biden announced Friday that 300 million coronavirus vaccines have been administered across the country.

“We’re heading into a very different summer from last year,” he said during a news conference. “A bright summer, frankly, a summer of joy.”

More than 175 million Americans have received at least one COVID-19 shot, and 26 states, along with Washington, D.C., have fully vaccinated 50% or more of their adult populations, Biden said.

“Nationwide, we are at the lowest number of daily deaths since the first days of the pandemic,” the president noted.

Biden also reiterated a commitment to closing the racial gaps in vaccination rates and warned of continued coronavirus variants.

President Biden says he doesn't think the Delta COVID variant will lead to lockdowns because so many people are fully vaccinated, but it "can cause more people to die in areas where people have not been vaccinated" https://t.co/R5ckSKMbkVpic.twitter.com/pz6SyzYNEj

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 18, 2021

On Thursday, the Biden administration also announced it would invest $3.2 billion to speed the development of antiviral pills that could treat COVID-19 and other viruses.

More than 600,000 Americans have died from the virus so far.

A HuffPost Guide To Coronavirus

• Do your vaccine side effects predict how you’d react to COVID-19?

• “I’ve been sick from COVID-19 for almost a year.”

• Should children go to camp this summer?

• These are the most common ways the COVID-19 pandemic has affected mental health.

• Find all that and more on our coronavirus hub page.  

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.