Jill Biden, Doug Emhoff To Visit Phoenix Wednesday

PHOENIX, AZ — First lady Jill Biden will visit Arizona this week along with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to the White House, the pair along with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego will tour a vaccination site Wednesday at Isaac Middle School.

The visit is part of a nationwide tour by President Joe Biden's administration to encourage Americans who've yet to be vaccinated to do so.

"To all those getting the vaccines into arms, thank you," Biden recently posted to her Twitter account.

"I've been all across the country talking about the importance of getting vaccinated," Emhoff recently tweeted. "America, let's get our shots!"

More than 3 million Arizonans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services; however, nearly all recent cases in the state are in unvaccinated people.

Arizona reported 16,910 total COVID-19 cases during May, state health officials said. Out of those, more than 95% — 16,139 in all — were people who hadn’t been fully vaccinated.

When broken down further, about 91 percent — 15,305 people in all — were unvaccinated. And about 5 percent had received one of two doses or weren’t two weeks beyond their second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or their one dose of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, state health officials said.

In Maricopa County, over 45 percent of residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, county health officials said. In the last week, Maricopa County residents received about 10,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day.

With the July 4th holiday approaching, the White House acknowledged recently that the Biden administration will fall short of its 70 percent goal to have fully vaccinated 165 million adults by the holiday.

White House officials said they're unconcerned. "We don't see it exactly like something went wrong," press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week, stressing that Americans' lives are still better off than they were when Biden announced the goal.

The First Lady and Second Gentleman will visit Dallas on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.