White House says half of U.S. adults will be fully vaccinated after Tuesday

The U.S. hit a notable benchmark in the COVID-19 fight Tuesday, with half of all adults on course to be fully vaccinated.

A White House official said the share of adults who have completed their vaccine course would tick above 50% by the end of the day.

Technically, a person isn’t considered fully vaccinated until 14 days after receiving the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson or the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna versions.

Persons who finished their vaccine course over the past two weeks — or did so on Tuesday — will reach that status in due time, however, so the administration touted the news.

“This is a major milestone in our country’s vaccination efforts,” Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt said.

Roughly 40% of the entire U.S. population has completed the vaccination protocol, according to federal data. Scientists say the U.S. should fully vaccinate 70% to 90% of its population to control the virus completely, though it will be difficult to get there as demand slows.

Vaccines are starting to reach younger age groups, however, which should boost percentages.

Pfizer’s shots are available to minors as young as 12, and Moderna says its vaccine could be available to adolescents by June because of positive trial results.

Moderna found no COVID-19 cases in the vaccine group, after two doses, compared to four diagnoses in the placebo group during its trial involving more than 3,700 persons aged 12 to 17. Right now, Moderna’s shots are offered for emergency use in those aged 18 and older.

Younger persons often do not show severe symptoms or die from COVID-19, although it is possible. The Moderna shots were 93% effective when clinicians looked for milder symptoms and swabbed for positive readings. The company said it was encouraged by the data and will seek approval for ages 12 to 17 from the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies.

Pfizer and Moderna both use messenger-RNA, a snippet of genetic code that’s encapsulated in lipids and instructs the body to make impostors of the coronavirus’s spike protein, so the body knows how to fight the real thing.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the additional supply will help the U.S. immunize high school students before the fall term.

“We have not only a single company, Pfizer, but it looks like we’ll have the source of a similar vaccine — an mRNA from Moderna,” he said.

In the meantime, President Biden wants to see at least 70% of all adults get at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by July 4, the date he circled at the entry point to normalcy.

So far 61.5% of U.S. adults have received an initial dose, and most people return for their second shot.

Mr. Slavitt said nine states already have reached the 70% mark within their borders.

“I really do want to applaud all of their good work and applaud all of the people in those states,” he said.

The rollout is having an impact. The daily average of coronavirus cases recently dropped below 25,000 for the first time since June, with hospitalizations and deaths steadily declining alongside reported infections.

Former President Donald Trump claimed credit Tuesday for the improvement after his administration championed multiple vaccine candidates and supported manufacturing of the shots alongside the testing and regulatory processes.

“New United States COVID cases, because of the record-breaking development of the vaccine and its early purchase and distribution by the Trump administration, [have] hit [their] lowest level in more than one year, and falling fast,” Mr. Trump, who is banned from Twitter, said in a formal statement.The former president also boasted about increasing acceptable of the possibility the virus escaped from a lab instead of jumping from animals to humans. Last year, that was largely considered a conspiracy theory.

“Now everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19,” Mr. Trump said, presumably meaning the lab or some other man-made source in the central Chinese city. “To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticized, as usual. Now they are all saying ‘He was right.’ Thank you!”

Mr. Slavitt and Dr. Fauci said the World Health Organization should keep digging into the issue and prod China to be more transparent about the origins.

“Many of us feel that is it more likely that this is a natural occurrence as has happened with [the first SARS virus in 2003] where it goes from an animal reservoir to a human, but we don’t know 100% the answer to that,” Dr. Fauci said. “We feel strongly, all of us, we should continue with the investigation and go to the next phase of the investigation that the WHO has done.”

“Because we don’t know 100% what the origin is, it’s imperative that we look and we do an investigation,” the doctor said.