Biden’s July 4 target to jab 70 per cent of adults will be missed

Joe Biden will miss his target for 70 per cent of adults to be vaccinated by July 4, the White House said.

US President Joe Biden set a ‘bold, ambitious goal’. Picture: AFP.

President Joe Biden will miss his target for 70 per cent of adults to be vaccinated by July 4, the White House said, vowing to do more to reach younger people.

As of Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) 65.4 per cent of over-18s had received one or more doses of one of the three vaccines available.

Those who have not yet had a jab are mainly younger, less educated, more likely to be Republicans, ethnic minorities and uninsured, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group.

Officials said that the US was on course for 70 per cent of Americans aged 27 or older to have at least one shot by the Independence Day holiday, but reaching that level of coverage in the 18 to 26 age group would take longer.

Adult vaccination rates also vary by state. The northeast has some of the highest uptakes, with Vermont the most advanced at 84 per cent partially vaccinated and 75 per cent fully vaccinated. The other end of the scale is dominated by states in the South, with 45 per cent of adults in Mississippi having one jab and 37 per cent fully vaccinated.

“We think it’ll take a few extra weeks to get to 70 per cent of all adults with at least one shot,” said Jeffrey Zients, head of the White House Covid response team. Only 53 per cent of those aged 25 to 39 have received one dose while among people aged 18 to 24 it is 47 per cent.

Despite missing Mr Biden’s goal, Mr Zients said that the administration had “succeeded beyond our highest expectations” in returning the nation to a pre-pandemic normality.

The country is registering about 10,000 new daily cases per day, or just three per 100,000 people, with the daily death rate at about 270, or 0.1 per 100,000. There are still concerns, especially in areas with lower vaccine take-up, about the rise of the more transmissible Delta variant, which now accounts for at least 20 per cent of cases.

“We don’t see it like something went wrong,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. “How we see it is, the President set a bold, ambitious goal … and we are expected to meet that goal just a couple of weeks after July 4. And as of today we are going to be at that point for people who are 30 years of age and older.”

American shop workers are leaving jobs in their droves, looking for new challenges after the pandemic and feeling comfortable after receiving generous unemployment benefits.

According to the Labour Department, 649,000 retail staff handed in their notice in April, the last month for which figures are available. It is the highest monthly total since data was first collected more than two decades ago. Some Republican-led states are set to put an early end to a scheme under which the unemployed receive $US300 a week on top of their usual benefits, arguing that the payments act as a disincentive to work.

Mr Biden, 78, hit back at the criticism last month, saying that nobody should be able to “game the system. If you’re receiving unemployment benefits and you’re offered a suitable job, you can’t refuse that job and just keep getting the unemployment benefits … We’ll insist that the law is followed with respect to benefits.”

At a federal level, the payments are set to end in September.

THE TIMES