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President Joe Biden expressed pointed frustration over the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate in the U.S. and pleaded that it’s “gigantically important” for Americans to step up and get inoculated against the virus as it surges once again. Biden, speaking Wednesday night at a televised town hall in Cincinnati, said the public health crisis has turned largely into a plight of the unvaccinated as the spread of the delta variant has led to a surge in infections around the country. “We have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten the vaccination — it’s that basic, that simple,” he said on the CNN town hall. (Jaffe and Madhani, 7/22)

President Joe Biden offered an absolute guarantee Wednesday that people who get their COVID-19 vaccines are completely protected from infection, sickness and death from the coronavirus. The reality is not that cut and dried. The vaccines are extremely effective but “breakthrough” infections do occur and the delta variant driving cases among the unvaccinated in the U.S. is not fully understood. Also Biden inflated the impact of his policies on U.S. jobs created in his first half-year in office, misleadingly stating his administration had done more than any other president. He neglects to mention he had population growth on his side in his comparison. (Woodward and Yen, 7/22)

The excuses range from the merely false to the absurd. The shots don’t work. They impair fertility. They’ll alter your DNA. They’ll magnetize you. They actually spread the virus. Unvaccinated Americans cite a litany of myths to explain their hesitance to get shots, confounding local health officials battling yet another surge of coronavirus cases fueled by the more transmissible delta variant. Inside the White House, the concern is so acute that President Joe Biden has publicly lashed out at Facebook Inc. for helping to spread disinformation. “Everything from Bill Gates putting a microchip in it — I’ve heard everything. It’s ridiculous,” said Tom Keller, chief executive officer of Ozarks Health Care in southern Missouri, a region with low vaccination rates that’s an epicenter of the U.S. delta outbreak. (Wingrove, Brown and Zuidijk, 7/22)

U.S. COVID-19 vaccination rates continue to lag largely due to widespread disinformation and misinformation campaigns designed to suppress the science and sway people from getting immunized against the virus, a top epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said Wednesday. Less than 50% of the U.S. population and 60% of those older than 18 have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Slightly more than 56% of the population has received at least one dose. That’s well behind the goal President Joe Biden’s administration set for the nation in March, which aimed for 70% of adults to have at least one dose of vaccine by July 4. (Miller, 7/21)

Roughly one in three Louisianans are fully vaccinated. This week, the state's health department reported the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations since late February. Scott Roe is one of them.  "Here I am recovering, getting out of here finally tomorrow. Am I going to get a vaccine? No," Roe said. "Because there's too many issues with these vaccines." This father, former baseball coach, small business owner and hunter caught COVID and then developed pneumonia. (7/21)

Two women have won custom-outfitted trucks and a nurse won $1 million as the latest recipients of West Virginia’s vaccination sweepstakes prizes. Gov. Jim Justice surprised Shannon Cook of Glen Dale in Marshall County while she was shopping Wednesday by calling her name over the store’s loudspeaker. She came to the front desk and was told she was among the winners in the fifth prize drawing of the sweepstakes, the governor’s office said. (7/22)

In one week, Baytown resident LaToya Washington will resume teaching in-person high school classes, and she’s worried her Johnson & Johnson vaccine from March will not be enough. As the delta variant spreads across the U.S., dominating new infections, people who received the one-dose immunization are considering a booster shot for extra protection. A pre-print study, which has not been peer-reviewed, released Tuesday from researchers at New York University found that people inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine formed fewer antibodies against the delta variant, and suggests people should consider a second vaccine dose. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not issued guidance on whether to consider an extra shot. (Wu, 7/22)

Nearly 90% of the University of Alabama's football team has been vaccinated for COVID-19, head coach Nick Saban said at a press conference Wednesday. The high percentage of vaccinated players on the team stands in contrast to the overall low vaccination rates in Alabama, where only 42.4% of people over the age of 18 have been fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times. (Reyes, 7/21)

KHN: Big Leagues Balk At Endorsing Vaccination 

Santa Clara County, where the San Francisco 49ers train and play their NFL home games, has one of the highest covid vaccination rates in California. As of July 11, more than 76% of its vaccine-eligible residents were fully vaccinated, partly because the county and the 49ers franchise turned Levi’s Stadium into a mass inoculation site where more than 350,000 doses were administered over four months. The 49ers themselves, however, are not so enthusiastic about the shots. In June, head coach Kyle Shanahan said only 53 of the 91 athletes on the team roster — 58% — were fully vaccinated. The team has issued no updates since. (Kreidler, 7/22)