The U.S. is entering a crucial stage of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign this week. All adults are eligible to receive shots starting today, and a panel of health officials will meet later this week to determine the future of Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) paused vaccine.

Everyone 16 and older who has not yet been eligible to get appointments to receive the vaccine will be ale to do so starting today. The White House launched a massive media blitz in an effort to target key people in the population with the goal of eventually achieving something akin to herd immunity. In the spotlight: young people, minority communities and conservatives.

According to Axios, top health officials, including Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, are leading the media offensive.

The new push begins as the country hits a major milestone. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 50 percent of all adults — equivalent to nearly 130 million people ages 18 and older — have received at least one dose of vaccine. More than 83 million adults (about 32.5 percent of the U.S. population) are now fully vaccinated.

As The Associated Press notes, the worldwide death toll now exceeds 3 million since the start of the pandemic.

A panel of CDC advisers is expected to meet on Friday to determine whether to end the pause, in effect since Tuesday, on distribution and administration of J&J’s shot because of concerns about a tiny number of blood clot complications in this country, including one death. Fauci on Sunday said that he anticipates Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will return for use this week in “some manner or form.”

“I don’t want to get ahead of the CDC and the [Food and Drug Administration] and the advisory committee, but I would imagine that what we will see is that it would come back and it would come back in some sort of either warning or restriction,” Fauci said on several Sunday talk shows.

“I hope that we don’t see anything extended beyond Friday. We need to get … some decision one way or the other,” he added (The Hill).

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