Coronavirus Watch: April will be 'open season' for vaccinations, Fauci says

April will be "open season" for vaccinations in the U.S. and any adult will be able to get vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted Thursday.

"By the time we get to April it will be ... open season, namely virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Fauci said on NBC's "Today" show.

Fauci said it will take several more months to logistically deliver injections to adult Americans but predicted herd immunity could be achieved by late summer.

The comments from the nation's highest-ranking infectious disease expert come amid a slow and chaotic vaccine rollout that has seen vaccination sites shut down because of a lack of supply and waiting lists of tens of thousands across the country who are unable to get an appointment for a shot. 

It's Thursday, and this is the Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news that you need to know:

• The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 793,000, evidence that job cuts remain high despite a substantial decline in new viral infections.
• Los Angeles will temporarily close a majority of its vaccine sites on Friday and Saturday, including the megasite at Dodger Stadium, because of a shortage of shots. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the move in a video conference Wednesday, saying the city only received 16,000 doses this week from the federal government.
• Ohio will add as many as 4,000 previously unreported COVID-19 deaths to the state's tally during the next week after the Ohio Department of Health discovered errors in how coronavirus deaths are confirmed. 
• Last year's Mardi Gras celebrations were responsible for tens of thousands of cases after a single person likely brought it to New Orleans, researchers at several institutions said in a pre-publication report.
• About 40% of the nation’s COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented if the United States’ average death rate matched other industrialized nations, a Lancet Commission report has found.
• Some U.S. colleges are struggling to contain COVID-19 spread. The University of Massachusetts Amherst announced this week that the campus is now considered "high risk" and all students are directed to self-sequester. At the University of California Berkeley, a self-sequester mandate was extended through least Feb. 15.
• Japan could waste 12 million Pfizer vaccine doses because of a shortage of special syringes capable of extracting more of the vaccine from vials.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported more than 27.3 million COVID-19 cases and 472,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 107.5 million cases and more than 2.3 million deaths. About 10.2%of people in the US have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 3.2% of people have received both doses, according to the CDC.

See the numbers in your area here, check out where cases are rising here, and see how many vaccines your state has received here.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck