President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have taped a video message aimed at urging Americans to mask up and building public confidence around vaccinating against COVID-19 that will be shown before the Super Bowl on Sunday, according to a CNN report Friday.
An administration official told CNN that the White House will use a message thanking health care workers that will air during Sunday’s event to strengthen trust around getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and to make an appeal to wear masks aimed at communities that have, in the wake of former President Trump’s politicization efforts, continued to refuse to wear face coverings.
The Super Bowl blitz would function as part of the Biden campaign promise to focus on mask-wearing as the central battleground for fighting the spread of coronavirus during his first 100 days in office.
The White House has been in touch with the NFL and brands involved in the Super Bowl on ways to push messaging around masking and vaccines during the highly-televised event, a White House official told CNN.
The move follows consultation with behavioral economists and messaging strategists as Biden and his COVID response team work at encouraging Americans to receive the vaccine when it is their turn, an administration official told CNN.
Biden has formally committed to a goal of keeping a pace of administering 1 million vaccine doses daily, with the hopes of ramping up to 1.5 million.
More than 35 million doses of the two coronavirus vaccines approved so far had been administered by Friday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Close to 28 million people had received a first dose, which is required for both of the existing approved vaccines.
A third single-shot vaccine could also soon be approved by the Federal Drug Administration — eliminating the burden of return visits for a second shot for individuals receiving the pending Johnson & Johnson vaccine and likely simplifying the messaging effort around vaccination.
Correction: This article misstated the number of vaccine doses. Twenty-eight million people have received a first dose of a COVID vaccine.
