Note: No Q&A tomorrow. Happy Juneteenth!

Question: Are we likely to meet President Biden’s vaccination goal by July 4th?

Answer: As a reminder to readers, earlier in May, President Biden set a goal to administer at least 1 dose to 70% of Americans ages 18+ by July 4th.   I’ve read some pessimistic takes on whether we’ll meet the goal, and based on my reading of the trends, I’m a bit pessimistic too.  I think we’ll make the goal a few days after the 4th.  And of course, that’s a national-level goal, we see large variations on local levels (state, county, neighborhood) (see Q&A of 5/20). 

The USA has a population of approximately 258 million people ages 18+.  To reach the goal, vaccines will need to be administered to ~180.6 million individuals ages 18+.  According to the CDC, as of yesterday,167.2 million people ages 18+ received at least one dose.  This means that another 13.4 million individuals will need to be reached within 17 days (e.g. today through July 3rd).  Put another way, ~788K individuals will need to be reached each day with their first dose to meet the goal.  CDC provides a host of data on vaccination trends, so I pulled for June the daily trends in first doses given to individuals ages 18+.  As you’ll see in Figure 1, we are falling below the goal, reaching an average of 685K individuals each day in June thus far.  If we were to continue apace, we would likely achieve the goal by July 7th.   

Figure 1. Daily trends in first doses in June (USA, ages 18+)