![]() The more people who get vaccinated, the less likely that's to be. What happened in New York last March was someone came into New York at some point in time with the virus, and it spread everywhere. And that's the goal, is to have more and more people vaccinated so the virus just dies out with the person who lands there. You know, what we're aiming for is what's happened really in Israel - and it's happened actually in parts of our country now, like San Francisco, where we've got over 70% vaccinated - where if someone were to get off an airplane from a country with the virus, the virus would have very few places to spread. And if we look over.ĬHANG: And let me just point out, 70% of adults is only about 55% of the U.S. And the clinicians and the scientists tell us that at 70% of the adult population, we will be in an extraordinarily better position. He likes to point the administration and the country to achieving these goals and these sort of bite-sized areas. But what the president is, I think - the habit - hopefully the country sees is that he likes to set goals. Is getting 70% of the adult population at least one shot ambitious enough? I mean, that would be nowhere near herd immunity, which is necessary to effectively contain this virus, right? And you just text to GETVAX or 438829, and you'll instantly see how you can get vaccinated.ĬHANG: I mean, that sounds great, but let me ask you. And so actually, the infrastructure investments we've been making and will continue to make, putting vaccines in more places, walk-in hours, and of course, the text line, which I think makes it super easy for anyone, whether they're young - all you need now is a mobile phone. Maybe COVID hasn't been as big a part of their existence because, you know, they haven't feared it as much.Īnd so for now, it's about easy, easy, easy. They may not have quite the same motivation. And so now, what characterizes the people who are going to get vaccinated next are people who need it to be a whole lot easier because they're younger, perhaps. SLAVITT: I think what we know now is that the people who are willing to do the hard work of finding a vaccine have pretty much had a chance to take their vaccines. Why spend this kind of money to increase access? So it feels like the White House is making it sound like access is not a problem right now. ![]() But I want to ask you right now about increasing access because this administration pointed out recently that something like 90% of Americans live within five miles of a vaccine site, and that by the end of this month, every adult in the U.S. There's community outreach, walk-in appointments at pharmacies, education campaigns to build vaccine confidence. OK, so the president laid out a pretty long list of initiatives to get vaccination rates up. We're going to talk about all of this now with White House senior advisor for COVID response, Andy Slavitt.ĪNDY SLAVITT: (Inaudible) for having me on, Ailsa.ĬHANG: Thank you for being here. We need you to bring it home, get vaccinated.ĬHANG: But vaccination rates are dropping, and public health restrictions can't be lifted until a bigger portion of the country gets vaccinated. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The light at the end of the tunnel is actually growing brighter and brighter, so Americans have sacrificed and served to make this progress possible, showing the best of who we are as a people. About a third of the country has been vaccinated so far. Biden is also pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to expand vaccine access and to bolster vaccine confidence. The Biden administration also emphasized mask-wearing early in his term, a sharp break with Trump, who rarely wore a mask in public and was uneven in his promotion of them as a mitigation tool.īefore serving on the Biden Covid-19 response team, Slavitt spent time as the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017.July 4 - that is the deadline President Biden is setting to get 70% of American adults at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot. Biden’s Covid-19 response has focused on getting Americans vaccinated, with a goal for 70 percent of adults in the country to be vaccinated by July 4. This Tuesday, those figures were closer to 15,000. There were over 185,000 new Covid-19 cases reported in the U.S. But while Biden’s presidential campaign and administration have been generally critical of Trump’s pandemic response, Slavitt credited the former president’s team earlier this year for its quick work on vaccine development. Biden assumed office last January amid surging Covid numbers nationwide, taking over the country’s pandemic response from President Donald Trump, whose handling of the coronavirus was rocky and veered often into the dangerous and bizarre.
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