Biden administration likely to miss Independence Day vaccination target
The setback comes amid a drop in the nation’s vaccination rate and difficulties in convincing younger Americans in particular to seek out the shot.
The Biden administration is likely to miss its goal of providing at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose to 70 percent of adults by July Fourth, a White House official confirmed on Tuesday.
The setback comes amid a weekslong drop in the nation’s vaccination rate and persistent difficulties in convincing younger Americans in particular to seek out the shot.
The Biden administration now estimates that it will hit the 70 percent threshold only for those aged 27 and up by July 4, a milestone that White House officials are expected to tout as a dramatic turnaround from the pace under the Trump administration. The vaccination rate also exceeds 70 percent for those age 30 and up.
“The important question is, does America look like America again? And across the country, it does,” a senior administration official said, arguing that more important than hitting the 70 percent mark is that much of the U.S. has already fully reopened.
White House officials in the coming days are also likely to highlight the sharp drop in Covid-19 cases and deaths across the nation, in a bid to shift focus from President Joe Biden’s initial U.S. vaccination goal to the reality in most places vaccination rates are high enough that people can resume large gatherings.
“We are seeing not just our most vulnerable safe, but our country reopening and Americans are going back to the things that we love,” the senior administration official said.
Biden set the 70 percent goal in early May, declaring at the time that if the nation succeeded, “then Americans will have taken a serious step towards a return to normal.” Yet while cases and deaths have fallen significantly in subsequent weeks, so has the vaccination rate.
The U.S. was averaging more than 2 million shots per day in early May; that has since slowed to closer to 1 million, as demand falls and the remaining unvaccinated population proves more difficult to reach.
That has alarmed health officials as the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus increasingly takes hold, threatening to drive up infections in pockets of the U.S. where fewer people have received shots.
A White House official emphasized that the administration will redouble its efforts to reach younger Americans and others that have been more reluctant to get vaccinated.
In addition to missing Biden’s 70 percent goal, the U.S. also lags the president’s secondary aim of fully vaccinating 160 million Americans by July 4. Just over 144 million adults have been fully vaccinated as of July 21, CDC data show.