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Vice President Pence To Get COVID-19 Vaccine Publicly On Friday

Vice President Pence attends a rally this month in support of GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Savannah, Ga.
Spencer Platt
/
Getty Images
Vice President Pence attends a rally this month in support of GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Savannah, Ga.

Updated at 7:11 p.m. ET

Vice President Pence will publicly receive a COVID-19 vaccine on Friday, the White House has announced.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams and second lady Karen Pence also will receive the vaccine.

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to receive the vaccine "as soon as next week," a transition official confirmed to NPR. Biden has also said he would get the vaccine publicly.

Pence, who chairs the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and other officials are working to instill trust in the vaccination process. By taking it in public, he hopes to "promote the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and build confidence among the American people," the White House said.

Pence will be the highest-ranking person yet to receive a COVID-19 vaccine publicly as distribution begins.

President Trump has credited his administration with fast-tracking vaccine development and has hailed it as among his greatest accomplishments in office.

Earlier this week, the United States crossed the grim milestone of 300,000 coronavirus deaths.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Alana Wise joined WAMU in September 2018 as the 2018-2020 Audion Reporting Fellow for Guns & America. Selected as one of 10 recipients nationwide of the Audion Reporting Fellowship, Alana works in the WAMU newsroom as part of a national reporting project and is spending two years focusing on the impact of guns in the Washington region.
Alana Wise
Alana Wise is a politics reporter on the Washington desk at NPR.