Despite President Biden’s goal of having at least 70% of Americans over the age of 18 vaccinated against COVID-19 by July 4, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. will fall short.
There are 56.2% of adults fully vaccinated in the U.S. and 65.7% have received at least one dose, according to the latest CDC data.
However, vaccination rates have slowed while cases have begun ticking up among those unvaccinated.
“That’s something that we’re worried about,” Dr. Brian Garibaldi, biocontainment unit director at Johns Hopkins, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “It’s another reason that we really need to step up our game in terms of getting people vaccinated. We’re probably not going to make President Biden’s goal of getting 70% of the country vaccinated by July 4, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t continue to make progress until the school year to try to make sure that we decrease community transmission as much as possible.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients recently conceded that the U.S. would not meet its July 4 goal.
"We don't see it exactly like something went wrong. How we see it is we set a bold, ambitious goal — something the president has done from the very beginning — and we are expected to meet that goal,” Psaki said on Tuesday. “Just a couple of weeks after July 4, and in fact, at this point, as of today, we're going to be already at that point for people who are 30 years of age and older.”
'We still have a ways to go'
Vaccine hesitancy has been a persistent issue since the COVID-19 vaccines first became available to the public.
There are several reasons as to why that is, including misinformation, concerns over the safety of the vaccines because of the accelerated timeline, and those who believe it’s a matter of personal choice.
“One of the biggest challenges is the misinformation that’s circulating about the potential side effects of the vaccine and the lack of a clear message about its benefit, both for individuals but also for communities,” Garibaldi said. “We’re starting to see some progress on that front in terms of meeting people where they are and trying to understand what their concerns are and really trying to battle that misinformation with valued members of local communities. But I still think we have a ways to go.”
Among the misleading claims about vaccine side effects are that it affects female fertility or that they are magnetic, despite scientific evidence proving otherwise.
“I think the first step is to just try to engage people in an honest conversation about ‘I’m curious why haven’t you yet gotten vaccinated,’” Garibaldi said. “I think the conversation starts there and where it branches off really depends on what their response is and what their concerns are.”
“People have very real concerns, legitimate concerns, about safety based on their own medical conditions, based on the people they’re around,” he added. “We also have to recognize there are many people who are hesitant to get vaccinated because of historical reasons, the inequities in our health care system, particularly amongst underrepresented minorities.”
Though vaccine hesitancy doesn’t discriminate based on race, it is particularly prevalent in Black and Latino communities, which many have attributed to historical inequities and mistreatment in the U.S. health care system.
How to get more people vaccinated
As unvaccinated people continue interacting with others around the world, variants have more opportunities to develop.
The Delta variant is currently the most serious mutant strain, and it is significantly more contagious and severe than many of the other variants. It’s ravaged countries like India, which is seeing a 7-day moving average of more than 51,000 confirmed cases a day.
In the U.S., outbreaks continue to occur among unvaccinated populations. One notable case happened at a Florida government building, where two people died and several others were hospitalized from the virus. All of them were unvaccinated. The one employee who was fully vaccinated did not get infected.
And children are also being affected, particularly because vaccines have only recently been approved for those 12 years and older.
“What we have seen is an increase in cases among unvaccinated people, which includes children,” Garibaldi said. “So over the last few months, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of children who have been infected and the number of children who have required hospitalization and in some cases, developed severe disease.”
Pfizer (PFE) has stated that its vaccine is effective against the Delta variant, though the exact efficacy is still unclear. Vaccine developers, including Pfizer, are currently working on booster shots.
“We know that the vaccines are very effective at preventing symptomatic illness,” Garibaldi said. “That probably means that the vaccines and those of us who are vaccinated are probably less likely to be able to transmit COVID-19. Luckily, so far, the data we’ve seen in terms of the mRNA vaccines and the Delta variant are holding that high level of protection in the real world.”
He continued: “I expect that even if you’re exposed to someone who has symptomatic COVID-19 and they’re not vaccinated, if you’ve been vaccinated, your chance of becoming symptomatic is quite low. Then, your chance of transmitting it on to someone else is also low.”
In the meantime, Garibaldi said, the country needs to continue to find ways to convince Americans to get vaccinated.
“We’ve seen some progress with incentives like vaccine lotteries, for example, where people have been getting financial incentives to get the vaccine,” he said. “Those have led to some uptick in vaccination rates in the areas that have implemented them. But we’ve seen that initial benefit from those incentives start to tick back down. So we’re going to have to come up with continued creative ways of getting people to recognize that this is for their own health, but also for the health of their friends and family and their communities.”
Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at [email protected].
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