WASHINGTON (CN) — Members of President Joe Biden’s Covid task force conceded Tuesday the U.S. is not on tack to meet the president's goal of having 70% of all adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
“America is getting ready for a truly historic Fourth of July,” White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeffrey Zients said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, stressing that infections are down nationwide over 90% from the pandemic’s peak. The strength of this data is leading Biden to host 1,000 people at the White House on the Fourth of July, Zients added.
“We’ve met or exceeded our goal for most of the adult population,” he said, noting 85% of the most vulnerable populations, those over the age of 65, and 70% of those older than 30 have at least one shot.
“Where the country has more work to do is with 18- to 26-year-olds,” he said.
Dragged down by lower rates of vaccinated young adults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that, as of Tuesday, only 65.4% of adults older have had at least one shot.
Meanwhile vaccinations have dropped nationally by about two-thirds, with just over 1 million doses being administered daily, down from over 3 million at the shot distribution effort’s peak.
This comes as the nation marked more than 600,000 deaths from Covid-19 last week, but there’s been fewer than 15,000 new cases reported daily since early June — the lowest numbers seen since testing became widely available, according to the New York Times virus tracker.
Down 23% over the last two weeks, about 300 Americans are dying a day, and about 17,000 remain hospitalized from the virus, a 22% decrease over the last two weeks.
But then there’s the delta variant.
First discovered in India, this mutation is now the dominant strain in the United Kingdom — where overall vaccination coverage is similar to that of the U.S. — and is causing dangerous surges in the country. Already gaining a large foothold in positive cases, the delta variant is growing in the U.S., following the trend of the now-dubbed Alpha variant, which was first identified in the U.K.
Compared with the original U.S. strain, the delta variant is 60% more transmissible and possibly more deadly. U.S. vaccines may be less effective against the strain when people are not fully immunized.
Jessica Holzer, an assistant professor of public health at University of New Haven, said in an interview that stagnating vaccinations combined with the prevalence of the delta variant is worrisome.
"The worst-case scenario isn’t the delta variant, it's the gamma or zeta variant,” she said, noting every unvaccinated person is a candidate for mutation.
“The virus is going to continue to mutate and learn, and that evolution wont lead to total annihilation, but we could have a constant state of coronavirus killing at risk individuals for the rest of our lives,” she said. “Vaccination is the only way out of it.”
Zients spoke Tuesday about the false belief by younger Americans that they’re at less of a risk.
“We are working with state and local leaders to reach them, and based on current data trends we think it will take a few extra weeks to get to 70% of all adults with that age group factored in,” he added.
Despite the nation missing Biden’s mark, Tuesday’s news follows local celebrations by states that have hit the 70% vaccination goal. Virginia on Monday became the 16th state to meet the threshold of 70% of adults 18 and older getting at least one dose.
“Even as we celebrate this tremendous achievement, we will continue working together to vaccinate everyone who is eligible so our commonwealth can keep moving forward,” Governor Ralph Northam said in a statement.
Just over 60% of the state, about 4.2 million Virginians, have received both shots.
And while the struggle to vaccinate the rest of the country is expected to continue, polling shows the more people who get vaccinated the more likely those unsure about doing so follow suit.
According to a Morning Consult poll released Thursday, the percentage of vaccine hesitant Americans has dropped from 18% in March to 11% today. Still, 20% of the population plans to skip the shot altogether.
Vaccine hesitancy meanwhile is marked by both a partisan and gender divide. While 54% of Republicans have already gotten the shot, there are 28% refusing it entirely. Thirteen points higher than Republican men, 46% of women in the GOP say they have no plan or are uncertain about getting vaccinated.
The GOP-heavy states of Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho and South Dakota all remain the least likely to get treated. At the current vaccination rate it could take up to a year for some of those states to reach the 70% goal.
“It’s a series of rationalizations, and a misunderstanding of the vaccine’s development,” said Holzer.
The public health expert said some organizations are taking good steps to address the issue, mainly through the use of mandatory vaccinations. While such a step from Biden or the federal government would be carry political and legal blowback, some private entities are moving toward the plan.
This includes some colleges, but it hasn't been a smooth process.
“As the numbers continue to decline, such draconian measures as requiring all students to be vaccinated is not reasonable,” a group of students at Indiana University wrote Monday in a federal complaint against mandatory jabs.
In a recent local press call, Paul Kidwell, vice president of policy for the Connecticut Hospital Association billed vaccine mandates for employees as “a step toward additional patient safety.”
"If we can say to our patients to their families and loved ones and friends, that we have taken every step we can that all our employees are vaccinated that’s really important to our patients but it's also important to our other employees right who’ve taken that step who also want to be protected," he told local affiliate WFSB.
Across the country, those challenging vaccination mandates are losing in court. One attempt to void a Texas hospital’s vaccine mandate was booted by a federal judge last week.
“We’ve demonstrated that not requiring isn’t going to get us there,” Holzer said, noting the Texas judge’s ruling could assure other private entities as they consider their own mandates. “If a judge in Texas will throw out such a suit then hopefully they’ll do it in other places.”
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