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The White House press briefing had a special guest on Wednesday, pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo, who is in town to meet with President Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci and record videos to encourage young people to get vaccinated. 

“She traversed red lights and stop signs to see us,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters as she kicked off the briefing, a nod to Rodrigo’s song “Drivers License.”

Psaki thanked Rodrigo for “elevating the important issue” of encouraging young people to get vaccinated.

Rodrigo, 18, took the podium with brief remarks.

She said she was “beyond honored and humbled” and thanked the White House for helping her spread the message of the importance of vaccines.

“It’s important to have conversations with friends and family members, encouraging all communities to get vaccinated, and actually get to a vaccination site, which you can do more easily than ever before,” she said, nodding to vaccines.gov.

Rodrigo’s trip to the White House comes as the White House is finding new ways to ramp up outreach to young people on vaccinations as youth vaccination rates continue to lag significantly behind the American general population.

The latest CDC data reflects how dire the vaccination rate for young people is as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads and cases rise nationwide. Only a quarter of children ages 12-15 are fully vaccinated, less than any other eligible group. That group became eligible to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine two months ago.

As of Tuesday, 33.5% of Americans age 12 to 15 have received at least one dose of vaccine, with 24.9% fully vaccinated, per data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty-five and a half percent of Americans 16 to 17 have received at least one dose, with 37.1% fully vaccinated. And 50.5% of Americans 18 to 24 have had at least one dose, with 41.6% fully vaccinated, all of these younger groups far behind the national average of 48.1% fully vaccinated.

Rodrigo, Psaki later said, will be meeting with Biden and Fauci “later this afternoon.”

She didn’t have information on when the videos would post.

Rodrigo “offered to come” to increase awareness of vaccines, Psaki said, and pressed the importance of her voice in this conversation.

“We need to meet people where we are, and speaking to young people, people who are under the age of 18. Many of them, as we’ve seen across the country, are huge Olivia Rodrigo fans,” Psaki said.

She added that hearing from Rodrigo that getting vaccinated is a way to keep yourself safe, meet with friends and safely attend concerts “is an important part of what we’re trying to do here, so she’s playing an important role in that.” 

“Not every 18-year-old uses her time to come do this so we appreciate her willingness to,” Psaki said.