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The head of the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccine program said Sunday that health officials are exploring the idea of giving a major group of Americans half volume doses of one vaccine to accelerate the rollout. Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that one way to speed up immunizations against Covid-19 was to give two half-volume doses of the Moderna vaccine to some individuals. (Pound, 1/3)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 4,225,756 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 13,071,925 doses. ... [Moncef] Slaoui said he was optimistic vaccinations would continue to accelerate. He rejected the suggestion that officials should prioritize giving more people a single shot, rather than holding back doses for the second shot, saying that cutting Moderna vaccine doses in half was “a more responsible approach that would be based on facts and data.”

Earlier Sunday, top federal infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci cautioned that the government shouldn't deviate from the doses and schedules used in clinical trials on the vaccines, adding that distribution efforts need to be more efficient. "We know what the science tells us," Fauci said on NBC's "Meet the Press," without directly addressing Slaoui's suggestion. "So my feeling ... is let's do it the way the clinical trials have instructed us to do it. But let's get more efficient into getting it into people's arms." (Ehley, 1/3)

As governments around the world rush to vaccinate their citizens against the surging coronavirus, scientists are locked in a heated debate over a surprising question: Is it wisest to hold back the second doses everyone will need, or to give as many people as possible an inoculation now — and push back the second doses until later? Since even the first shot appears to provide some protection against Covid-19, some experts believe that the shortest route to containing the virus is to disseminate the initial injections as widely as possible now. (Wu and Robbins, 1/3)