"Go and get vaccinated": Biden asks to close ranks against COVID-19 in his speech to Congress

"Everyone over the age of 16, everyone, is now eligible and can be vaccinated (against COVID-19) immediately. So go and get vaccinated now. They are available," President Joe Biden asked the Americans during his first speech before both houses of Congress this Wednesday night.

"There is still a lot of work to be done to defeat this virus. We cannot lower our guard now

," the president warned before an almost deserted room in the House of Representatives, in which only 200 legislators were admitted to mitigate infections.

Typically, the speech is witnessed by about 1,600 people each year.

Attendees had to wear face masks and sit apart.

Biden's primetime call for Americans to close ranks against COVID-19 comes at a time when a portion of the population is especially doubting Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine, the use of which has been halted. for 11 days in the country following the investigation of blood clots that have proven to be rare, but fatal. 

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The Democrat's speech, which comes just one day before his first 100 days in office, began by accounting for his Administration's progress in the face of the pandemic, the main challenge in the first three months of his term.  

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"After I promised that we would receive 100 million injections of COVID-19 into people's arms in 100 days, we will have provided more than 220 million in those 100 days," Biden said of one of his main campaign promises.

So far, 290 million vaccines have been distributed in the United States and more than 230 million have been administered.

About 96 million Americans are fully vaccinated, which is 29% of the population.

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When the Democrat took office in late January, an average of more than 3,000 people died daily from COVID-19.

Until this week, that number stayed below 700 a day.

Emergency approval of three virus vaccines -

Pfizer

, December 11;

Moderna

, on December 18;

and

Johnson & Johnson

, on February 28 - has played a key role in the response of his Administration to the pandemic, which as of this Wednesday has left a balance of more than 573,000 deaths in the United States, according to data from Johns University Hopkins.

"We are pooling all federal resources. We are receiving vaccines in almost 40,000 pharmacies and more than 700 community health centers where the poorest of the poor can be reached. We are establishing community vaccination sites, developing mobile units to reach out to communities. communities, "said the president.

An analysis by Noticias Telemundo found that, in terms of health and specifically in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden has fulfilled in his first 100 days in office some of the promises he made before assuming the presidency, at the end from January.

But others have yet to materialize.

The president fulfilled his initial commitment to administer 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his government by March 19.

So he raised the threshold to a more ambitious goal: 200 million vaccines by April 29, which he surpassed eight days earlier, on April 21.

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As of this Wednesday,

more than 50% of the country's adults had already received at least one dose of the vaccine

.

The United States has a population of 331 million, according to 2020 census data. 

The president also managed to make the mask mandatory on federal properties, as he had promised, reincorporated the United States into the World Health Organization (WHO) and set up mass vaccination centers.

However, the Democrat has not yet succeeded in reopening most schools for in-person learning or deploying, as promised, mobile vaccination clinics

to immunize the most affected and hard-to-reach communities, such as Latinos.

During his speech to Congress, the president unveiled the second part of his economic plan Build Back Better, to face the financial blow of the pandemic.

The $ 1.8 trillion package comprises the American Jobs Plan, which he said "will add millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic growth in the coming years."

President Joe Biden delivers his first address to both houses of Congress.

AP

"These are high-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced. Nearly 90% of the infrastructure jobs created in the American Jobs Plan do not require a college degree. 75% do not require an associate's degree," Biden said.

An estimated 

8.4 million jobs were lost

due to the pandemic. 

One of Biden's most notable moves to cushion the financial blow of the pandemic was the signing of a $ 1.9 trillion bill, which passed without a single Republican vote.

The package meant direct payments of $ 1,400 per person to more than 160 million households, as well as millions in aid to state and local governments.