WASHINGTON — For months, President Biden has laid out goal after goal for taming the coronavirus pandemic and then exceeded his own benchmarks. Now, though, the United States is unlikely to meet his target to have 70 percent of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
The White House has launched a monthlong blitz to combat hesitancy and a lack of urgency to get shots, particularly in the South and Midwest, but it is increasingly resigned to missing the President’s vaccination target. The administration insists 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 Mr. Biden said it would be months ago.
About 15.5 million unvaccinated adults need to receive at least one dose in the next four weeks for Mr. Biden to meet his goal. But the pace of new vaccinations in the United States has dropped below 400,000 people per day — down from a high of nearly 2 million per day two months ago.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that he still hopes the goal will be met “and if we don’t, we’re going to continue to keep pushing.”
So far 14 states have reached 70 percent coverage among adults, with about a dozen more on pace to reach the milestone by July 4. But the state-to-state variation is stark.
Dr. Fauci said the administration is “pleading” with states, particularly those with low vaccination rates, to step up their efforts in the coming months, though some of the states trailing behind are hardly sharing the urgency.
On a conference call Tuesday, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients delivered an impassioned call for governors to join the administration in “pulling out all the stops” on vaccinations this month. “We need your leadership on the ground — which is where it matters the most — more than ever,” he said.
In Mississippi, which trails the nation with only about 34 percent of its population vaccinated, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has called Mr. Biden’s goal “arbitrary, to say the least.”
The vaccination rate in the state has dropped so sharply that it would take the better part of a year for the state to reach the 70 percent target.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Mr. Reeves said he encouraged residents to get vaccinated, but that the more important marker was the decline in cases in the state.
That sentiment makes winning over people like University of Mississippi student Mary Crane all the more important to Mr. Biden meeting his goal. She hasn’t felt much urgency to get the coronavirus vaccine because she’s already had the virus, and the family she’s living with during the summer break has been vaccinated.
“Initially it was to wait on everyone else to get it and not take a vaccine,” she said, explaining why she hasn’t been vaccinated. “But now that it’s available, there’s really not a reason I haven’t gotten it, other than I just haven’t gotten it.”
Dr. Fauci on Tuesday emphasized that increased vaccination was essential to stamping out potentially dangerous variants, including the so-called “Delta variant” first identified in India.
The highly transmissible coronavirus variant accounts for 6 percent of new infections in the United States, the Biden Administration said Tuesday. Yet vaccines appear to be highly effective against this version of the virus that has quickly spread into Great Britain and elsewhere.
In an attempt to drive up the vaccination rate, the White House has worked to encourage an array of incentives for people to get shots — from paid time off to the chance to win a million dollars. It’s partnered with community groups, businesses, and health providers to make it easier than ever to get a shot. Those efforts have helped sustain some of the interest, but the trends point to Mr. Biden missing the target by several percentage points.
Meanwhile, Mr. Biden is set to make his first overseas trip as President, which will focus on bolstering the availability of Western coronavirus vaccines abroad — a bid to both counter China and calm tensions with allies who’ve been at odds with the United States over its hoarding of shots and intellectual property rights.
Mr. Biden departs Wednesday for the Group of Seven summit in the U.K. to discuss how the world’s richest democracies can help the rest of the world snuff out the virus. Both Mr. Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson aim to rally the G-7 behind a plan to make more shots available to low-income countries.
The summit will be a show of unity after the group’s members spent much of the year at odds over vaccines. Mr. Biden riled Europe by continuing Trump-era policies that directed almost all early U.S. vaccine production into American arms, and by throwing his support behind a push from lower-income countries to waive certain patent protections for the shots.
While the G-7 countries are sure to agree on the need for more shots, the specifics of what they’ll propose or how it will be funded remains unclear. Mr. Johnson has called for a goal of vaccinating the world by the end of 2022, while Mr. Biden has said the United States would be an “arsenal” of vaccines for the rest of the globe but has so far committed just 25 million doses of the U.S. government’s stockpile.
First Published June 9, 2021, 3:33 a.m.
