Biden urges vaccinations ahead of July 4 target

BIDEN: "Act now, act now."

U.S. President Joe Biden urged Americans to get vaccinated on Friday as the country looked likely to miss his goal to get at least one shot to 70 percent of American adults by the July 4 holiday.

BIDEN: "Sixty-five percent of American adults have gotten at least one shot... On July 4, we're going to celebrate our independence from the virus as we celebrate our independence of our nation."

Biden announced the U.S. had administered 300 million COVID-19 vaccinations in 150 days, a number he called an "important milestone," but he stressed that more work needed to be done.

BIDEN: "Deaths and hospitalizations are drastically down in places where people are getting vaccinated. But, unfortunately, cases and hospitalizations are not going down in many places in the lower vaccination rate states. They're actually going up in some places."

Biden also warned Americans about the Delta variant, which the World Health Organization said on Friday was becoming the globally dominant strain of the disease.

BIDEN: "It's a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier and particularly dangerous for young people. But the good news is we have the solution... The best way to protect yourself against these variants are to get fully vaccinated."

Biden said addressing racial imbalances in vaccination rates was still a big concern.

Earlier on Friday, in Atlanta, Georgia, Vice President Kamala Harris visited a vaccination site at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, to underscore the importance of faith groups in the effort to overcome hesitancy and accelerate vaccinations.

HARRIS: "We gotta get those numbers up. We can do better."

The White House said on Friday that more than 175 million Americans had now received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, and 55% of adults were fully vaccinated.