Pop star Olivia Rodrigo is heading to the White House on Wednesday to lend her voice to the Biden administration’s Covid vaccination campaign.
The Disney actor-turned-singer-songwriter will meet with President Joe Biden and his chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci at the White House, an official there confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday.
Rodrigo will cut videos highlighting the need for young people to get vaccinated and answering their questions about the shots. The videos will be shared with Rodrigo’s more than 28 million social media followers, as well as on White House accounts, the official told NBC.
The collaboration with Rodrigo, whose album “Sour” returned to No. 1 on the charts this week — months after lead single “Driver’s License” broke Spotify’s single-day streaming record — offers the latest look at how Biden’s Covid team is trying to connect with different groups of Americans.
The administration’s new vaccine push includes working with pediatricians’ offices and other child health care providers, with the goal of getting more adolescents ages 12 to 18 inoculated before they head back to school in the fall.
The White House is also leveraging social media and celebrity influencers to get the word out. Biden and Fauci have participated in Youtube events and worked with content creators on the platform to help spread the message on vaccination.
Rodrigo confirmed the trip in a post on Instagram.
“I’m in! See you tomorrow at the White House!” Rodrigo replied to a post on Biden’s official account, which put out a call for help in getting young people vaccinated.
The latest step in the vaccination campaign comes after Fauci said that more than 99% of people who die from Covid are unvaccinated.
“Only 0.5% of those who die are vaccinated,” said Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
