Did the White House Suggest Cuban Protests Were Only About Vaccines and U.S. Sanctions?

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claimed in a tweet Monday that the White House suggested that “this liberty movement [in Cuba] is solely about lack of vaccines and US sanctions.”
This tweet came after Biden administration official Julie Chung, who is the acting assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairstweeted that the protesters are acting to “express concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages.”
Chung was the first Biden official to speak out on the protests in Cuba, and it wasn’t until Monday morning that President Biden released a statement, in which he said: