White House signals new COVID-19 strategy as delta variant spreads

White House signals new COVID-19 strategy as delta variant spreads President Biden on Tuesday pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as the White House signaled a shift toward grassroots tactics to reach those who have yet to get a shot. Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels TheHill

President Biden on Tuesday pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as the White House signaled a shift toward grassroots tactics to reach those who have yet to get a shot.

Biden, who just days earlier hosted more than a thousand people at the White House for an outdoor Independence Day gathering, cautioned against getting overconfident in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic as the delta variant contributes to rising case counts in less vaccinated parts of the country.

“Our fight against this virus is not over,” Biden said in prepared remarks delivered from the White House. “Right now, as I speak to you, millions of Americans are still unvaccinated and unprotected. And because of that, their communities are at risk. Their friends are at risk, the people that they care about are at risk. This is an even bigger concern because of the delta variant.”

The president laid out a series of steps his administration is taking to make the vaccine more accessible, with a focus on getting the shot to young people in particular. The White House coronavirus response team is planning to direct more vaccines to doctors’ offices and pediatricians so that individuals, specifically those ages 12-18, can have access to the shots.

Biden also highlighted door-to-door, community level outreach and mobile vaccination clinics as ways to bring the vaccine to more Americans this summer.

In addition, the White House is deploying federal “surge response teams” to help local officials mitigate the spread of the fast-moving delta variant areas of the country with low vaccination rates.

The White House expects 160 million Americans to be fully vaccinated by the end of the week, with Biden on Tuesday declaring that the virus “is on the run” and highlighting the “hard fought progress” against the pandemic. Still, the rate of vaccinations has slowed in recent weeks and officials have acknowledged it will take a concerted effort to reach Americans who have yet to get the shot.

The U.S. narrowly missed Biden’s July 4 goal of having 70 percent of U.S. adults receive at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. As of Monday, 67 percent of had received at least one dose.

The Biden administration predicts that 70 percent of those 27 and older will have received at least one dose after data from the July 4 weekend is collected. Officials project that it will take a few more weeks to reach younger adults.

Biden on Tuesday did not announce any new goals or deadlines for getting the population vaccinated. Instead, the president and his top health officials emphasized that their focus is on getting as many people vaccinated as possible to prevent future outbreaks and block the virus from mutating further, a point of concern as new, more contagious variants spread.

“If you’re vaccinated you’re protected; if you’re unvaccinated, you’re not,” Biden said Tuesday, noting that individuals are putting their friends and family at risk by not getting the vaccine. ..

The delta variant now accounts for roughly 25 percent of cases in the U.S., administration officials said last week. The spread of the more transmissible and potentially deadly variant has coincided with outbreaks concentrated in less vaccinated pockets of the country. ...