WASHINGTON -- For months, President Joe Biden has laid out goal after goal for taming the coronavirus pandemic and then exceeded his own benchmarks. Now, though, the U.S. is on pace to fall short of his aim to have 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
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The White House has launched a month-long blitz to combat vaccine 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 Biden said it would be months ago.
About 16 million unvaccinated adults need to receive at least one dose in the next four weeks for Biden to meet his goal. But the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. has dropped to about 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% 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.
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% of its population vaccinated, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has called Biden's goal "arbitrary, to say the least."
The vaccination rate in the state has dropped off so sharply that it would take the better part of a year for the state to reach the 70% target.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Reeves said he encouraged residents to get vaccinated, but that the more important marker was the decline in cases in the state.
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 that is now the dominant strain in the United Kingdom and is growing in the U.S.
The delta variant accounts for 6% of new infections in the United States, Fauci said Tuesday. Yet vaccines appear to be highly effective against this version of the virus.
"It's essentially taking over" in the United Kingdom, Fauci said at a briefing for reporters. "We cannot let that happen in the United States, which is such a powerful argument" for vaccination, he said.
Fauci referred to data from Britain's public health agency that shows two doses of the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca are 88% effective in preventing symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant. He said in an interview that the Pfizer data would be similar for Moderna's product, which also is an mRNA vaccine.
But one vaccine dose offers just 33% protection, the data shows, a reminder of how strongly the second shot boosts immunity to the virus, Fauci said. With the United States in the midst of providing vaccines to adolescents and other people who have waited to get them, second doses are critical, he said.
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 Biden missing the target by several percentage points.
In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine created a lottery offering $1 million prizes for vaccinated adults and full-ride college scholarships for children. Ohio's lottery kicked off a wave of similar incentive lotteries nationally.
DeWine's May 12 announcement of the state's Vax-a-Million program had the desired effect, leading to a 43% boost in state vaccination numbers over the previous week. But the impact was short-lived, with vaccinations falling again the next week.
SHOT RULE PROTESTED
Separately, dozens of staff members at a Houston-area hospital protested Monday night against a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against covid-19.
The hospital, Houston Methodist, had told employees that they had to be vaccinated by Monday. Last month, 117 employees filed a lawsuit against the hospital over the vaccine policy.
While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends health care workers get a flu shot, and some hospital systems require it, few U.S. companies have required covid-19 shots, despite federal government guidance that says employers can mandate vaccines for on-site workers.
Some companies say they are wary of setting mandates until the vaccines have received full approval by the Food and Drug Administration, which has granted emergency use authorization.
Jennifer Bridges, a nurse who led the Houston Methodist protest, has cited the lack of full FDA approval for the shots as a reason she won't get vaccinated.
"If we don't stop this now and do some kind of change, everybody's just going to topple," Bridges told local news media covering the protest. "It's going to create a domino effect. Everybody across the nation is going to be forced to get things into their body that they don't want and that's not right."
Those who did not meet the hospital's vaccination deadline Monday were placed on a two-week unpaid suspension. If they do not meet the requirements by June 21, Houston Methodist will "initiate the employee termination process."
The workers' lawsuit accuses the hospital of "forcing its employees to be human 'guinea pigs' as a condition for continued employment."
In a statement, Houston Methodist said that by Monday nearly 100% of its 26,000 employees had complied with the vaccine policy. The hospital said it was aware that some employees who had not met the vaccine requirements planned to protest and had invited other employees to join them.
"We fully support the right of our employees to peacefully gather on their own time, but it is unacceptable to even suggest they abandon their patients to participate in this activity," the hospital said. "We have faith that our employees will continue putting our patients first."
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Leah Willingham and Andrew Welsh-Huggins of The Associated Press; by Lenny Bernstein of The Washington Post; and by Jesus Jimenez and Niraj Chokshi of The New York Times.
