Hurray! All US Adults Are Now Eligible for the COVID Vaccine

The Biden admin meets a critical deadline.

Stefani Reynolds/ZUMA

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All adults ages 16 and up in the United States are now eligible to receive the COVID vaccine, meeting the April 19 deadline set by President Biden last month. That critical milestone comes as the White House announced on Sunday that half of all US adults—about 128 million people—have received at least one dose of the vaccine, yet another stat that captures how quickly the rate of vaccinations in the US has ramped up in recent weeks. That pace is particularly striking when compared internationally; earlier this month, CNN reported that the US was vaccinating people at five times the global average.

But significant challenges persist. Vaccines are going unused in large pockets across the country, particularly in regions with strong evangelical communities. Almost half of Republicans, according to a poll released last week, say they will decline to receive the vaccine if possible. As I wrote last week, all this resistance poses a real threat to the US ever achieving herd immunity as highly contagious COVID variants continue to spread.

Still, the expansion of vaccine eligibility today is a real success for the Biden administration. To anyone 16 and over who had been waiting to get the jab, get out there!

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

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Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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