President Biden said on Sunday that getting vaccinated against the coronavirus was “the most patriotic thing” that Americans could do. In remarks addressed to a crowd attending a Fourth of July party on the White House’s South Lawn, and broadcast nationally, he said the United States was emerging from the darkness of the pandemic but stressed that the country was not yet fully clear of it.

He singled out the Delta virus variant as a particular threat.

Mr. Biden had hoped to turn the Fourth of July into a celebration not just of the nation’s independence, but also of reaching his administration’s ambitious goal to have 70 percent of adults at least partly inoculated against the coronavirus before the holiday.

He didn’t quite make it. As of Friday, about 67 percent of people in the country 18 and older had gotten at least one vaccine dose, according to a New York Times tracker. Almost 60 percent of adults were fully vaccinated, and the highly contagious Delta variant was creating hot spots, particularly in states with low vaccination rates, like Missouri.