Andy Slavitt, senior White House adviser on Covid response, predicted that a growing number of Americans will continue to use the Covid vaccine because of reports and evidence from reliable sources.
“In Israel, which they support us a little bit, 89% of seniors have chosen to take the vaccine,” Slavitt said. “We think we can get numbers like that if we just continue to reliably answer people’s questions because these are very good, safe and effective vaccines.”
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 37% of people over 65 in the US are fully vaccinated. In the past week alone, states delivered about 17 million shots.
To further facilitate the distribution of vaccines, the Biden government announced that it will roll out a nationwide vaccine availability website to link the multitude of vaccine registration websites from states, pharmacies and other companies.
Slavitt told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that “the idea would be that if you put in your zip code, it would show you on a map of all the places near you that claim to have vaccines.” He added that streamlining the process would reduce not only widespread frustration but hesitancy to vaccinate.
Host Shepard Smith pressed Slavitt to his comments on vaccine passports. Speaking at a White House press conference on Monday, Slavitt said vaccine passports should be free, private, and secure, but that “it’s not the government’s role to keep that data and do that.”
Slavitt said Tuesday night that a government-run vaccination passport could lead some Americans to think the government is too involved, especially in collecting data necessary for a vaccine passport. That backlash, he said, would be counterproductive to the overall vaccination effort.
“We think the public will be more reluctant to get vaccinated if they feel like the government, the federal government is playing too much of a role in that,” Slavitt said.