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Biden announces a strategy change as the pace of vaccination slows.

The goal is vaccinating 70 percent of American adults at least partially by July 4.

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Biden Outlines New Strategy as Vaccinations Slow

President Biden on Tuesday announced a new goal of getting at least one vaccination shot to 70 percent of American adults by July 4. The effort includes offering shots in more local clinics and pharmacies.

As everyone knows, I promised that we’d administer 100 million shots in my first 100 days. After we met that goal, we doubled it to a historic 200 million shots. By the time we reached the 100 days, last week, we had shattered that mark with over 220 million shots in arms. But soon we’ll have reached the adults who are most eager to get vaccinated. And at that point, this effort will shift to a new phase, which is what I want to talk about today. Our goal by July 4th is to have 70 percent of adult Americans, with at least one shot and 160 million Americans fully vaccinated. That means getting close to 100 million shots, some first shots, other second shots, over the next 60 days. For those having trouble finding a location or making an appointment, we’re going to make it easier than ever. We have formally launched a simple website where you can find the vaccination locations closest to you. That site is vaccines.gov. We’re also going to slip vaccines directly to the pediatricians, ship them to pediatricians, during the following weeks so parents and their children can talk to their family doctor about it, and get the shot from a provider they trust the most. Now, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, but there’s one fact I want every American to know. People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from Covid-19. This is your choice. It’s life and death. And I hope everyone knows within themselves it makes the choice that, well, it’s going to help them, and their loved ones be safe.

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President Biden on Tuesday announced a new goal of getting at least one vaccination shot to 70 percent of American adults by July 4. The effort includes offering shots in more local clinics and pharmacies.CreditCredit...Allison Zaucha for The New York Times

President Biden, confronting lagging vaccinations that threaten his promise of near normalcy by July 4, on Tuesday overhauled the strategy to battle the pandemic, shifting from mass vaccination sites to more local settings to target younger Americans and those hesitant to get a shot.

In a speech at the White House, Mr. Biden said he was launching a new phase in the fight against the coronavirus, with a goal of at least partly vaccinating 70 percent of adults by Independence Day and with a personal plea to all of the unvaccinated: “This is your choice. It’s life and death.”

After three months of battling supply shortages and distribution bottlenecks, the Biden administration is confronting a problem that the president said was inevitable: Many of those who were most eager to get vaccinated have already done so. Vaccination sites at stadiums once filled with carloads of people seeking shots are closing, and states that once clamored for more vaccines are finding that they cannot use all of the doses that the federal government wants to ship to them.

Yet the administration’s own health experts say tens of millions more Americans must be vaccinated before the positivity rate is low enough to return to what many people consider ordinary life.

The administration now wants tens of thousands of pharmacies to allow people to walk in for shots. It has also ordered up pop-up and mobile clinics, especially in rural areas, and it plans to devote tens of millions of dollars for community outreach workers to provide transport and help arrange child care for those in high-risk neighborhoods who want to be vaccinated.

To build up confidence in vaccines, federal officials plan to enlist the help of family doctors and other emissaries who are trusted voices in their communities.

In a new effort to match supply with demand, federal officials informed states on Tuesday that if they did not order their full allocation of doses in any given week, that vaccine would be considered part of a federal pool that is available to other states that want to order more. Until now, if states failed to order all of the doses allotted to them on the basis of population, they could carry over that supply to the next week.

Mr. Biden also announced a new federal website and phone number that will help people find the vaccination site closest to them. “We’re going to make it easier than ever to get vaccinated,” he promised.

The administration is hoping for an uptick in vaccinations if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adolescents ages 12 to 15 by early next week, as expected. The president said adolescents were important in the fight against the virus because while they are not as susceptible to severe disease, they can still get sick and infect others.

To get there, Mr. Biden said, the government must shift the focus from mass vaccination sites to doctors’ offices, pharmacies and other local settings, and mount a far more concerted effort to reach those who are reluctant to get shots or simply figure it is too much trouble.

As of Tuesday, more than 106 million people in the United States were fully vaccinated and more than 56 percent of adults — or almost 148 million people — had received at least one shot. That has contributed to a steep decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths across all age groups, federal officials said.

But despite a flood of doses available, the pace of vaccination has fallen off considerably over the past two and a half weeks. Providers are now administering an average of about 2.19 million doses per day, about a 35 percent decrease from the peak of 3.38 million reported on April 13, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Biden called for 160 million adults to be fully vaccinated by July 4 — an increase of 55 million people, or more than 50 percent. About 35 million more adults would have to receive at least one shot to reach the president’s goal of 70 percent of adults who are at least partly protected.

Sharon LaFraniere is an investigative reporter. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on Donald Trump’s connections with Russia. More about Sharon LaFraniere

Noah Weiland is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering health care. He was raised in East Lansing, Mich., and graduated from the University of Chicago. More about Noah Weiland

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