President Joe Biden will announce that every adult in the country will be eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine by April 19, two weeks ahead of the previous deadline, which was May 1, according to an administration official who spoke to CNN.
Biden is scheduled to visit a vaccination site in Alexandria, Virginia, after which he’ll give remarks on the state of vaccinations from the White House. There, he will tout the fact that 150 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in his first 75 days in office, in line with a goal to have 200 million shots administered within his first 100 days. He is also expected to mention how the United States reported more than 4 million doses of the vaccine administered in a single 24-hour period last weekend.
The announcement should come later today.
The news comes a week after Biden said that 90% of adults will be eligible to get a vaccine within the next three weeks as well as have a vaccination site within five miles of where they live.
Thus far, more than 167 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered nationwide, according to the CDC’s official COVID Data Tracker. Just under 19% of the entire population is already fully vaccinated and that number is expected to rise significantly in the coming weeks as more vaccines become available.
Despite these gains, Americans are still strongly encouraged to wear masks and practice social distancing. The coronavirus is still a threat until enough people are vaccinated. Nearly 556,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began last spring, according to data from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
