According to data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday, 70% of adults in the US have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, nearly a month later than US President Joe Biden's target date of July 4.
At the beginning of May, Biden set a goal of achieving a 70% vaccination rate on US Independence Day, but by the July 4 holiday, only 67% of adults had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
Health experts say that while this milestone is a major achievement for the country, it should be viewed as a bottom line rather than a ceiling, especially as the highly infectious delta variant spreads rapidly.
“We need at least 80% of the population to be vaccinated to actually get some form of herd immunity,” Dr. Paul Offit, a voting member of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said in a recent interview. “It's a highly infectious virus.”
Dr. Natasha Bhuyan, a family doctor at One Medical in Phoenix, said that while the 70% milestone is important, there are still concerns in some local communities where vaccination rates are low.
According to CDC data, as of last Sunday, the US received an average of about 66,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day, far below the peak of over 3 million doses in mid-April, but up 14% from a week ago.
Although Biden has repeatedly urged Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine, it is not easy for Americans to be persuaded by the Kaiser Family Foundation's “KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance” data.
Looking back at a group of respondents initially surveyed in January, KFF found that among those who didn't want to get vaccinated in January, two-thirds insisted on refusing to get vaccinated in June, and 9% wanted to wait and see; 24% had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and most of them were persuaded by their families or employers. Of those who wanted to get vaccinated in January, 92% have now received at least one dose.
Biden recently announced a series of new measures to increase the US vaccination rate, including recommending that states use funds previously allocated by the federal government to provide a reward of $100 per person for future vaccinations.