The White House accepted that they will not be able to achieve President Joe Biden’s aim of delivering at least one COVID-19 vaccine jab to 70% of U.S. people by July 4, officials confirmed Tuesday.
The Biden administration published the new data Tuesday during a briefing, showing it expects to reach 70% of Americans age 27 or older with at least one shot by the July 4 holiday but will fall short on Biden’s goal for adults 18 and older.
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A White House representative stated it is now intensifying its focus on vaccinating younger Americans age 18-26, who have proved to be least likely to get a vaccine when it’s available for them.
The White House said meeting Biden’s vaccination goal is less important than the pace of the nation’s reopening, which is exceeding even its own internal projections as the overwhelming majority of the nation’s most vulnerable people are fully vaccinated and cases and deaths are at their lowest rates since the earliest days of the pandemic.
Still, the nationwide rate of new vaccinations has dropped off precipitously over the past month even as shots have become more available, with fewer than 300,000 Americans now getting their first dose per day on average.
The White House launched a month-long blitz to combat vaccine hesitancy and a lack of urgency to get shots, particularly in the South and Midwest. The administration previously insisted that even if the goal isn’t reached, it will have little effect on the overall U.S. recovery, which is already ahead of where Biden said it would be months ago.
Fifteen of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., have delivered at least one shot to 70% of adults 18 and older. States have implement incentives like million-dollar prizes, freebeer and countless other giveaways around the country that have failed to significantly move the needle on vaccine hesitancy.
Americans at highest risk for complications from COVID-19 are overwhelmingly vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but only 53% aged 25-39 have received one dose. Among those 18-24, it’s 47%.
To date 65.4% of the adult U.S. population have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 144.3 million adults are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
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The Associated Press, Reuters and NewsNation contributed to this report.
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