After missing the hoped-for goal of 70 percent of the U.S. population being vaccinated by July 4th, President Joe Biden is ramping up efforts to increase the numbers. Tuesday, Biden called for employers to set up clinics at work and to offer paid time off as part a push to reach millions of unvaccinated Americans. The Association of American Medical Colleges is among the organizations working to reach that milestone. Dr. Ross McKinney is the Chief Scientific Officer with the nonprofit.
“The element that adds urgency to the need to get vaccinated is the Delta variant spreading,” because that is more virulent, spreads more quickly, it causes worse disease and it causes worse disease in younger people,” according to Dr. McKinney.
Kristiana McLarty is a 4th year medical student at Morehouse School of Medicine. She says her age group is lagging behind and affecting the nation’s vaccination rate.
“The 18 to 34-year-old population, for some reason we’re slowly getting vaccinated because we don’t think that COVID affects us as much, we don’t think we ca get as sick,” McLarty said. “But in reality we see that the hospitalizations are increasing in that group because they are getting vaccinated at a slower rate that compared to the older population. So the18 to 34 year olds are unfortunately are holding up that number of getting us to 70% as a nation.”
McKinney says the numbers vary greatly around the nation, with Georgia at the lower end of the COVID-19 inoculation spectrum.
“Georgia, looks like you have something on the order of 45% of people who have received two doses and that’s just not going to cut it, if the Delta variant starts to spread, it’s going to catch a lot of people,” McKinney said.
More information is available at VaccineWise.org.
