Former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said Thursday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that President Joe Biden needed to get “very aggressive” and advocate that schools, businesses and government agencies require daily negative coronavirus tests results from the unvaccinated for which they pay.
Cooper said, “Fifty-seven percent of those eligible are fully vaccinated in the United States. Now given those percentages and the vigor of the Delta variant, what more does the administration need to be doing right now?”
Slavitt said, “It was great to see the town hall last night that President Biden is not willing to quit. Not willing to leave any American behind. And willing to continue to make the case. Now it’s going to take more than him to make the case. It’s going to take getting very aggressive about particularly younger people. People under 25. I think as they return to school, presumably at full FDA approval, we should be really seriously considering whether schools, workplaces, government agencies ought to be saying, ‘Hey, if you’re coming here, you need to be vaccinated. If you’re not, you need to show you have a negative test every single day.”
He added, “Look, if people say they don’t want to be vaccinated, which some people might say, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that’s fine. We want you to show up every morning an hour before work and get a negative test. Maybe even at your own expense. Until the point where people will say, you no he what? It makes more sense to actually get vaccinated. If you give people that option, I think you’re going to see more and more people take the option to get vaccinated.”
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