shorts have 3 days to cover. if they don't the stock goes on a threshold list and cannot be shorted until it comes off the list. the sec is lax about enforcing this. but the brokerages keep track and when they get a hint that there are not enough shares to cover the shorts, ( it has happened ) they will no longer accept buy orders on the stock. this happened in cprk ( apparently in the last week.) you can get a lot of info about shorting from that board if you want to take the time to read through a jillion postings.
The volume of short shares listed on the finra list is for each individual day and is not an aggregate list. There is no real way to find the total amount of shares short unless the stock ends up on the threshold list. Then you know the stock has not been covered and you are able to add up the short volume for each day to find out the total short shares. So in conclusion yes VIPR is being shorted that much every day.
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