The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an amazing 4.6 million doses of coronavirus vaccine administered, which would be quite an achievement, if it were true. It’s not, though: it’s a statistical aberration.
According to Bloomberg, the extraordinarily high number is due to a scheduling issue with when the CDC pulled the data from the various states. Typically, the agency collects the data from the states at 6 p.m. ET, but because of a software update, the information was collected much later in the day Saturday.
The report of the number of doses from the CDC is based on the number reported by the states, not directly reporting the number of doses given, so a number of states who post their daily totals early in the day, from the previous 24 hours, may have been reported in the massive Saturday haul.