White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials Biden on FDA and CDC Authorizing Updated COVID-19 Vaccines This week, we begin a new phase in our COVID-19 response. We are launching a new vaccine – our first in almost two years – with a new approach. For Americans, that means one COVID-19 shot, once a year, each fall. Starting this week, at tens of thousands of convenient pharmacies, doctor’s offices, community health centres, and other places, Americans aged 12 and older can go get this new fall COVID-19 vaccine. The new vaccines provide the strongest protection from the new Omicron strain of the COVID virus, which did not exist when the original vaccine was developed. As the virus continues to change, we will now be able to update our vaccines annually to target the dominant variant. Just like your annual flu shot, you should get it sometime between Labor Day and Halloween. It’s safe, it’s easy to get, and it’s free. Go to Vaccines.gov to find a location near your h
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Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State Berlin, Germany SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good afternoon. It’s a great pleasure to be back in Europe to continue intensive coordination with allies and partners on some of the most urgent issues facing our countries, and that begins with today’s NATO meetings. And I want to especially thank Secretary General Stoltenberg for his leadership, the deputy secretary general of NATO, and especially Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of Germany – not only for hosting us, but for taking initiative to bring the foreign ministers together in an informal but very productive series of discussions. The 30 NATO Allies remain fully engaged, aligned, committed to supporting a democratic, independent, and sovereign Ukraine. The world has seen the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people these past three months. It’s seen the unity at the heart of NATO. President Putin launched this brutal and unprovoked war thinking he could eliminate Ukraine as an independen
Lesbian Day of Visabilty White House Media: Celebration of Lesbian Day of Visibility, the White House hosted a roundtable conversation with trailblazing lesbian and LGBTQI+ senior leaders from the White House and the broader Biden-Harris Administration. The roundtable included lesbian and queer advocates, community leaders, leaders across the federal government, several of whom are the first out lesbians to hold their position, including Ambassador Chantale Wong, Director of the Asian Development Bank, who is the first out lesbian to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to an ambassador post; Admiral Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health, who is a lesbian and the first openly transgender woman to achieve the rank the four-star admiral in any of the country’s uniformed services; White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre; and Deputy White House Communications Director Pili Tobar. The roundtable was convened by White House Gender Policy Council Director Jennifer Klein. Whi
Joe Biden White House Statement by President Joe Biden on Phone Call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine President Zelenskyy reached out to me tonight and we just finished speaking. I condemned this unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. I briefed him on the steps we are taking to rally international condemnation, including tonight at the United Nations Security Council. He asked me to call on the leaders of the world to speak out clearly against President Putin’s flagrant aggression, and to stand with the people of Ukraine. Tomorrow, I will be meeting with the Leaders of the G7, and the United States and our Allies and partners will be imposing severe sanctions on Russia. We will continue to provide support and assistance to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. Statement by President Biden on Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified Attack on Ukraine The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and
Secretary of state Antony J. Blinken SECRETARY BLINKEN: There is obviously a tremendous amount of focus on what’s happening in Europe, in particular Russia’s ongoing buildup of forces near Ukraine. And that remains front and center in what we’re doing and indeed what I continue to do even as we’re heading to Australia. I’ve been on the phone during a chunk of this trip talking to various counterparts with some focus on Russia-Ukraine. I spent some time talking to the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan as well. And this is part of, as we’ve tabulated, with foreign counterparts something like 200-plus engagements just in recent weeks – phone calls, video conferences, in-person meetings, where we have been working to coordinate all of our partners in standing up to this Russian aggression directed toward Ukraine. And as you all know, we have been engaged in a two-track strategy where we have, on the one hand, been pursuing diplomacy, by far the preferable course, the responsib
Sen. Roger Marshall A Republican Senator from Kansas is taking aim at the secrecy surrounding the financial records of White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, which despite Fauci’s claims to the contrary remain largely hidden from public view. GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas will introduce the Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals Act, or FAUCI Act, due to his concerns about the lack of transparency regarding Fauci’s records, according to The Hill . The FAUCI Act would require the Office of Government Ethics website to list the pay and perks for administration officials such as Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The agency also would be required to provide a list of those paid by the government whose financial records are not public. The proposed legislation is an outgrowth of Marshall’s clash with Fauci during a Senate hearing Tuesday in which Marshall criticized both Fauci’s $434,000 salary and t
Remarks by Joe Biden in Meeting with Members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team on the Omicron Variant J oe Biden: Hello, folks. I’m about to get a briefing from my COVID team on Omicron variant. And we got some encouraging news from Pfizer yesterday. Preliminary lab data has indicated — it shows that — that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine protects avents [sic] — protects against the Omicron And today, we’ve got even more good news from the FDA and the CDC: 16- and 17-year-olds are eligible for boosters. So, my message is really very straightforward and simple. If you got vaccinated six months ago — and I say to all of you in the press as well, not a joke — I say to all of you: If you got vaccinated six months ago, get your booster right away. We’re seeing a lot more Americans do just that. Fifty million — fifty million people are — now have gotten their booster shots. And we’re getting people their booster shots at a record pace — roughly a million people a day. And
Joe Biden On July 28, the President and the bipartisan group announced agreement on the details of a once-in-a-generation investment in our infrastructure, which was immediately taken up in the Senate for consideration. The legislation includes around $550 billion in new federal investment in America’s roads and bridges, water infrastructure, resilience, internet, and more. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will grow the economy, enhance our competitiveness, create good jobs, and make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just. The legislation will create good-paying, union jobs. With the President’s Build Back Better Agenda, these investments will add, on average, around 2 million jobs per year over the course of the decade, while accelerating America’s path to full employment and increasing labor force participation. President Biden believes that we must invest in our country and in our people by creating good-paying union jobs, tackling the climate crisis,
First, I want to provide an update on our efforts to protect more Americans by getting more shots in arms, starting with vaccinating the unvaccinated. We’ve made tremendous progress across the past nine months. As of today, 77 percent of eligible Americans — those 12 and older — have gotten at least their first shot. And thanks to the President’s leadership on vaccination requirements, we continue to make important progress. More than 3,500 organizations — from healthcare systems, to educational institutions, to state and local governments, to private businesses — have already stepped up to adopt vaccination requirements. These vaccination requirements have increased vaccination rates by 20-plus percentage points, with organisations routinely seeing their share of fully vaccinated workers rise above 90 percent. On Monday, Washington state announced that more than 90 percent of state employees are now fully vaccinated. That’s up from around 49 percent just five weeks ago, with more peop