Biden falls short of COVID-19 vaccination target for July 4 [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• President Joe Biden’s goal of inoculating at least 70 percent of the entire US adult population was not met by Independence Day.
• Despite various efforts to urge Americans to get vaccinated, the federal government is struggling to get everybody to do their part.
• Per the CDC, the US is having an average of less than 300,000 vaccinations per day.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Friday that more than 172 million Americans or around 67 percent of the adult population have been administered with at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine — with the White House officials conceding in late June that it would miss President Joe Biden’s goal of hitting the target of at least 70 percent population by a couple of weeks.

With vaccination rates slowing down amid the offerings of several incentives by both government and private sector, the Biden administration is enduring a battle to urge all the American people to get the shots.

“I’ve run into several major crises now. And you set these goals because they force you and everybody to get very, very focused on what is the most important thing,” White House COVID-19 team adviser Andy Slavitt said.

Even if Biden fell short of his July 4th vaccination goal, Slavitt still praised the president’s efforts and other initiatives on informing the people how important the vaccine is and why it should be taken.

“In a kind of crisis response, you have a very limited ability to test without wasting valuable time. So the playbook in a crisis is actually to try everything, even if you can’t necessarily attribute actions, then do the best you can to pick things apart,” said Slavitt, who wrote a book entitled ‘Preventable,’ regarding the country’s COVID-19 response.

The federal government launched various programs in a bid to widen and expedite the vaccination processes across the country, following Biden’s declaration. Most of the vaccine supplies coming from public vaccination sites were transferred to smaller-scale clinics and mobile vaccination groups. Pharmaceutical stores tied up with federal retail schemes have amplified giving shots to areas with high cases of virus fatalities.

White House authorities also persistently promote a hotline, text message and website service to assist people in connecting them to nearest available vaccination sites. According to recent data from the Vaccine Finder site, the digital service was utilized for at least 25 million.

With a recent US poll showing that unvaccinated citizens either have no time to secure the vaccines or think that it was something that is not necessary, the federal government had also launched an array of new incentives in a bid to entice them.

Per the CDC, the US is presently having a daily average of less than 300,000 vaccinations. At the time when Biden announced his Independence Day Goal, the US was hitting over 820,000 daily shots. The White House could have reached their target if those figures were sustained.

Source: CBS News