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First Lady Jill Biden to visit Waipahu High School vaccination effort Sunday

ASSOCIATED PRESS
                                First lady Jill Biden listened to an explanation of telehealth services in Alaska during a visit, Wednesday, to the Alaska Native Health Tribal Health Consortium office in Anchorage, Alaska. Biden stopped in Alaska’s largest city as she traveled to Tokyo, her first solo international trip as first lady, leading a U.S. delegation to the Olympic Games.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

First lady Jill Biden listened to an explanation of telehealth services in Alaska during a visit, Wednesday, to the Alaska Native Health Tribal Health Consortium office in Anchorage, Alaska. Biden stopped in Alaska’s largest city as she traveled to Tokyo, her first solo international trip as first lady, leading a U.S. delegation to the Olympic Games.

First lady Jill Biden will travel to Honolulu on Saturday and Sunday, and plans to visit a vaccination clinic at Waipahu High School on Sunday where she will “encourage the community to get vaccinated,” her office said Thursday.

Biden is scheduled to arrive late Saturday morning at Joint Base Pearl Harbor- Hickam.

Following the 1 p.m. visit to Waipahu High School on Sunday, which is subject to change, Biden “will join military families for a barbeque at Joint Base Pearl Harbor- Hickam,” the Office of the First Lady said.

Biden is scheduled to depart from the joint base at about 4 p.m. Sunday for her return to Washington, D.C.

On Thursday Biden arrived in Japan for the opening of the Tokyo Olympics on her first international trip alone as first lady, a two-day mission geared toward generating enthusiasm for an event shadowed and shackled by the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported.

Biden flew into Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, where she was met by a Japanese diplomatic delegation before heading in a motorcade to the Akasaka Palace for a scheduled dinner with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and his wife, Mariko Suga.

Biden, leading a scaled-back U.S. delegation, was scheduled to meet Mariko Suga at the palace Friday morning, followed by a “virtual get-together” with members of the U.S. Olympic team and culminating with her attendance at the opening ceremony at Olympic Stadium.

Late Wednesday, during a refueling stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, en route to Japan, Biden made an impassioned plea for Alaskans to get vaccinated to save lives and speed the return to normality.

“Even as we celebrate the progress we’ve made, we know that this last push is the hardest of all,” Biden said.

“Recently, a woman came up to me to thank me for the work our administration has done to get shots in arms,” she added. “She fought back tears when she told me that she lost four family members to COVID last year. Four.”

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