The White House defended its decision not to release specific goals for the fall booster rollout.
to focus its booster outreach on people at higher risk of severe COVID, like older Americans and those with compromised immune systems.But Jha said Friday that the administration's booster outreach had been limited by a stalled funding request on Capitol Hill, which is not expected to be taken up until after the midterm elections.
"We are running the best campaign we can and, we think, quite an effective campaign. But no doubt about it, it has been substantially hampered by the lack of funding from Congress," added Jha.found half of American adults had heard little or nothing about the updated boosters, and 40% were unsure if the shot was recommended for them.
"I feel very clear that our goal is every American who's eligible should get vaccinated, and we've got to do everything we can to both share that information, show the benefits of that, and make it as easy as possible," said Jha. , the White House has shied away from setting specific goals for uptake of the updated boosters.
Jha confirmed Friday that the White House had made"no internal goals" and did not plan to publicly commit to any specific benchmarks for measuring their updated booster campaign. "In none of that conversation has it ever felt useful to identify a specific number. Just as we don't have a number for how many deaths we're willing to accept. We are going to keep driving deaths down lower and lower and lower," said Jha.