Joe Biden govt to tackle COVID-19 with door-to-door vaccination campaign in US

US President Joe Biden is embarking on a five-point approach aimed at encouraging Americans to get their coronavirus shots as rates of vaccinations have fallen across the US and a new variant of COVID-19 threatens new outbreaks. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that a door-to-door canvassing effort begun during the White House’s “Month of Action” in June would be part of the new effort to surge vaccination rates in states where the numbers of Covid-19 vaccinations are lowest. A study has shown that, since early May, virtually every COVID-19 hospitalization and death in the United States has been among the unvaccinated.

Reason to ensure 100 per cent Vaccination

Globally, there have been more than 184.3 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 3.9 million associated deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has reported more than 33.7 million confirmed cases and more than 605,000 associated deaths. While the overall vaccination rate for adults is hovering around 57 per cent nationwide, pockets of the United States have vaccination rates far below that number. Officials from the CDC reported that 1,000 counties have a COVID-19 vaccination rate under 30 per cent. CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said these counties are primarily in the Southeast and Midwest, and they remain at higher risk of COVID-19 transmission, especially as the more infectious delta variant continues to spread. The United States reports 3.37Cr cases of coronavirus with 6.06 lakh deaths as of now. 

America's door-to-door vaccination drive

The Biden administration is launching a new "door-to-door" effort to vaccinate Americans after falling short of its Fourth of July goal of having 70 per cent of the adult population with at least the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Amid the administration's ongoing concerns of a surge of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, President Biden pitched his plan to boost the vaccinated population during remarks he made on Tuesday. "Now we need to go community by community, neighbourhood by neighbourhood and often times door-to-door- literally knocking on doors, to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus," said Joe Biden. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also referred to the "door-to-door" effort while listing the five objectives of Biden's COVID response earlier in the day at Tuesday's briefing, citing "targeted community door-to-door outreach" to "get remaining Americans vaccinated by ensuring that they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is." Critics were quick to slam the new initiative on social media, including several GOP lawmakers. "By the end of this week, we'll have reached the mark of 160 million fully vaccinated Americans. And that's a goal I set in March that I'm thrilled we're going to hit just a few days after July the Fourth. So, we will have 160 million fully vaccinated Americans -- up from roughly 3 million when we took office five months ago," White House said in the statement.