White House admits that US won’t meet Biden’s July 4 vaccination goal
The White House on Tuesday conceded that the US won’t reach President Biden’s goal of getting 70 percent of American adults to receive at least one COVID-19 shot by the Fourth of July.
Jeff Zients, Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator, blamed not being on track to hit the July 4 target on the lagging vaccination rates among adults 18 to 26, saying the administration has “more work to do” with the demographic.
“We think it’ll take a few extra weeks to get to 70 percent of all adults with at least one shot with the 18- to 26-year-olds factored in,” Zients said at a press briefing.
However, Zients insisted that the vaccination campaign “succeeded beyond our highest expectations.”
“We set 70 percent of adults as our aspirational target. And we have met or exceeded it for most of the adult population,” he said.
Currently, at least 70 percent of adults ages 30 and older have received at least one vaccine shot, and the country is on track to hit the same target for those 27 and older by July 4, according to Zients.
“This is amazing progress and has our country returning to normal much sooner than anyone could have predicted,” Zients said.
Zients said it would be up to Biden to decide whether to set future vaccination goals.
“He’s our goal setter, and he’s done a great job at setting aspirational and ambitious goals that have really driven our success,” he said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday also defended the country being behind on reaching the 70 percent goal, saying that the administration doesn’t “see it exactly like something went wrong.”
“There’s no playbook for this. There’s no record to look back and say these were the goals that were achieved five years ago or 10 years ago because we’re dealing with a historic pandemic,” Pskaki said. “And the President’s view is that we should set bold ambitious goals and do everything we possibly can to achieve them
“But we also are honest about where we need to continue to redouble our efforts, and that’s among people who are 18 to 26. That is a small, relatively small demographic of the country, but one where there needs to be continued work, and we’re going to use every tool at our disposal to push for that,” she added.
