Be a patriot, get vaccinated, Biden urges
White House party includes health workers
• U.S. President Joe Biden celebrated the nation's 245th birthday on Sunday by opening the doors of the White House and calling on Americans to do their part to end the COVID-19 pandemic once and for all.
“This year the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration for we are emerging from the darkness of ... a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain, fear and heartbreaking loss,” Biden told a White House party opened to around 1,000 people, including military families and workers involved in the COVID-19 response.
The largest White House event since Biden took office in January included burgers and fireworks and was geared toward giving Americans something to celebrate as signs of normalcy have returned following a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans.
Still, the country has fallen short of Biden's goals to have 70 per cent of U.S. adults get at least one vaccine shot by Sunday. The figure is around 67 per cent as some people have resisted getting shots, raising concerns among health officials as the more aggressive Delta variant threatens to generate another surge.
Biden mourned the people who died, praised Americans who aided in the country's emergency response and said vaccines were the best defence against new variants of the virus.
“It's the most patriotic thing you can do,” Biden said of getting vaccinated.
Republican governors implored their residents on Sunday to get vaccinated, as polling shows that vaccine hesitancy has been driven by Republicans.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed concern about possible “trouble” ahead for Arkansans if the state did not accelerate its vaccination rate. In Arkansas, about 53 per cent of adults have at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with about two-thirds of adults nationally. The state has seen a recent spike in COVID cases and hospitalizations, driven mostly by the Delta variant.
“The solution is the vaccinations,” Hutchinson said on CNN'S State of the Union, adding that while many of the state's senior citizens have gotten vaccinated, the Delta variant was now hitting Arkansas' younger, unvaccinated adults. “It is a great concern.”
Hutchinson avoided saying whether he would reimpose mask mandates if the state's numbers did not improve, and also stopped short of saying Arkansas was about to experience a third wave of COVID cases and deaths. However, he emphasized that the state would continue to make vaccines accessible, including, for example, offering free shots at the state's July Fourth “Pops on the River” celebration on Sunday.
“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said. “And if we stopped right here, and we didn't get greater per cent of our population vaccinated, then we're going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter.”