Joe Biden will travel to Michigan to celebrate progress in COVID fight

President Joe Biden will travel to Traverse City with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Saturday, July 3, to mark the progress in the fight against COVID-19 after more than a year of the pandemic, according to the White House official. 

The visit is part of the Biden administration’s nationwide America’s Back Together tour. The administration is looking to promote the idea of the country returning to a pre-pandemic normal. Vice president Kamala Harris, First lady Jill Biden, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, and members of Biden’s Cabinet will also travel across the country over the holiday weekend. 

The White House official said, “The work to vaccinate America and bring us to this moment has been monumental, and the President, vice president, first lady, and second gentleman, along with members of the Cabinet, will be fanning out across the country to celebrate our progress in fighting this pandemic and getting our country back to normal.”

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Harris will travel to Nevada, and Jill Biden will travel to Maine and New Hampshire on Saturday, whereas Emhoff will travel to Utah on Friday.  

According to the official, Biden’s Cabinet will deploy across the country to attend the roundtable and baseball games plus visit fire stations, festivals, cookouts between Thursday and Sunday.

States that members of the Cabinet will visit include Colorado, Virginia, Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.

Biden’s Michigan visit comes a week after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer officially lifted all the state’s coronavirus restrictions as COVID-19 case numbers decreased. Michigan is a key battleground state that Biden won in the 2020 election.

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Bidens are hosting at the White House on the Fourth of July for more than a thousand essential workers and military families on the South Lawn. The celebration will be the largest in-person White House event since Biden took office in January. Besides, the National mall will be open for the traditional July Fourth fireworks, and crowds are expected to gather. 

Last week, the White House acknowledged that the US would fall short of Biden’s July Fourth COVID 19 vaccination goals saying the country has more work to do to get younger Americans vaccinated. Biden had aimed to get 70% of US adults to have at least one dose of COVID 19 vaccines and to have 160 million Americans fully vaccinated by July Fourth. 

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 66.1% of American adults had at least one vaccine shot and more than 153 million Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID. 

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White House COVID response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that the administration was on track to hit the goals after the initial target date. The administration is now focused on getting younger Americans to get vaccinated against the virus.

The COVID restrictions are now being rolled back across the nation and more Americans are returning to their pre-pandemic lifestyles. However, federal health officials have warned that unvaccinated people can spread the virus and more transmissible new variants could accelerate the spread.

Federal officials are signaling the emerging B.1.617.2, or Delta variant, first identified in India, is another reason to get vaccinated. Recently, a former white house senior adviser for COVID response told CNN that Delta variant is like “Covid on steroids.”