First lady Jill Biden stopped by a pop-up Nashville vaccination clinic on Wednesday to encourage residents to get inoculated against COVID-19 and, if they have, get newly developed powerful booster shots designed to protect against new variants of the novel coronavirus.
The first lady’s visit to the Metro Health Department event at St. James Missionary Baptist Church, north of Charlotte Avenue and east of Interstate 40, comes on the same day the Food and Drug Administration approved COVID-19 booster shots for children between the ages of 5 and 11. While the risk of illness or death for this group has generally proven to be far less than for people who are older or who have compromised immune symptoms, that risk does exist.
Biden kept her remarks short and did not field questions from the media.
“It’s so important that we keep all Americans healthy,” Biden told the couple dozen nurses and members of the public at the event. “It’s really a group effort to get everyone involved.”
Biden was scheduled to deliver remarks to a Democratic National Committee event in Nashville after the church vaccine event. After that, she was scheduled to fly to Milwaukee, where she will speak to the Milwaukee Teacher’s Education Association.
The church has frequently played host to vaccination events since the start of the pandemic, said Pastor George Brooks.
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“Our doors are always open for persons to come in here as long as the Health Department wants to come,” Brooks said.
This was the first lady’s first visit to Music City since 2021 when she visited the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery, where she also encouraged Nashvillians to get vaccinations.
Both President Joe Biden and the first lady have had COVID-19 and rebound cases of the novel coronavirus, according to news reports.
Though the visit also comes less than a month after President Biden declared on “60 Minutes” that the pandemic was over. As he said at the time:
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it,” Biden said during the interview in Detroit. “But the pandemic is over.”
It’s unclear how receptive Tennesseans will be to the first lady’s message. The state has among the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Less than 64% of the state’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, making Tennessee the 45th worst state in the nation of getting the shots, according to CDC data. The national average is about 80%. The percentage of the state population that’s completed its course of shots and gotten at least one booster is 46.7%. That’s much closer to the national average of 48.9%.
Later in the afternoon, Biden attended a private Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Nashville’s Hillsboro-West End neighborhood, where she spoke to a gathered crowd for about six minutes.
Chip Forrester, former chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, introduced Biden. Forrester also acknowledged several Tennessee Democratic candidates in attendance, including gubernatorial candidate Dr. Jason Martin and state Sen. Heidi Campbell, who is vying for Tennessee’s newly drawn 5th Congressional District.
Biden told the crowd “we have to act now” ahead of November’s midterm elections and asked for their continued support and donations during the next few weeks.
“We — all of us, all of you — are powerful,” Biden said. “Together, we will win this November”.
Frank Gluck is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at fgluck@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FrankGluck.
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