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But on a recent day at a Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the University of Jackson, Mississippi, getting the vaccine was a cinch. People who wanted to be vaccinated had just arrived, and the staff at the site were bored in the meantime.
“Today is calm, but it hasn’t been like this all the time,” Atehortua said.
At a drive-thru site in Jackson that can handle up to 1,200 appointments a day, only 275 people signed up on Thursday – and some of them didn’t bother to show up, said workers.
Experts fear the decline suggests that many people don’t want the vaccine and worry that what is happening here could jeopardize herd immunity being achieved, which doctors say will not be achieved until at least 70% of the population will not be vaccinated.
Public health officials fight disinformation
Campaigns promoting vaccination are overwhelmed by misinformation on social media and elsewhere now that most people who needed and wanted the vaccine have been vaccinated, public health officials have said.
“Communication problems have been constant since the start of the pandemic and this has created distrust among the population,” Atehortua said. “So unfortunately – and this is a reflection I made with some colleagues in public health – we are losing the communication battle.”
JSU, a historically black university, has nearly 7,000 students and 1,100 faculty and staff. Almost 700 of them have been vaccinated on campus.
False information is what prompted JSU student Halle Coleman to delay getting her vaccines, she told CNN.
“I felt like everywhere I looked I saw someone with a new conspiracy theory or just a reason not to get the shot,” she said. Some of the conspiracy theories she heard included that the vaccine “was a way for the government to hunt us down, it was a way for the government to inject us with a new disease to make us sicker, to have control over us. us, ”Coleman mentioned.
Mississippi was one of the first states to open up Covid-19 vaccination to everyone 16 and over, but the state is far from having vaccinated everyone who qualifies. About 30% of Mississippians received their first dose of the vaccine, while the national average is closer to 40%.
And it’s not just Mississippi that’s lagging behind. States from South Carolina to Louisiana – with the exception of Florida – have vaccinated fewer than 59 out of 100 people in the states.
And it’s not just the southern states where vaccination rates are slowing. As the United States hit the 200 million-dose milestone this week since the first injections in December, vaccinations reported by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have slowed from the peak earlier this month. nearly 3.4 million shots reported in one day. .
This week, Thursday and Friday, vaccinations were below 3 million for two consecutive days, and the seven-day average of new reported Covid-19 doses administered continued to decline. He is now at 2,862,758.
Other vaccine providers in the region are reporting the same pattern, according to Kristy Fryman, emergency response coordinator and information officer for the Mercer County health district.
Reaching the “ hard audience ”
Pharmacies in part of Louisiana say demand for Covid-19 vaccines has “dropped completely.” Georgian officials recently announced that they are closing a mass vaccination site due to low demand. Tennessee leaders said late last month they were opening eligibility following a low number of vaccinations in rural areas. Parts of Texas have also experienced a drop in demand.
“We’re getting to the point where we’re getting to a tough audience,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “Those who are unsure or not about the vaccine do not have enough information or are just not interested in the vaccine for other reasons.”
Part of the problem is the uncertainty surrounding Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine. On April 13, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration recommended suspending use of the vaccine while they investigate the risk of rare and serious blood clots.
Data from the Mississippi Department of Health shows a decrease in vaccinations since the end of March, and the largest drop has occurred in the past two weeks. More than 74,000 appointments for the Covid-19 vaccine remain vacant statewide until mid-May.
Felicia Kent, director of revenue for the Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center, said that when the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was suspended, about 80% of people who were due for their second dose showed up at a vaccination site, but “we only had a handful that came out for their first dose. “
“Getting people out for the first dose has now become a challenge,” Kent said, as public health officials are enlisting the help of community members.
“What we’re doing now is working with churches, working with community organizations, also working with local barbers, grocery stores,” to spread the word that vaccines are safe and that everyone must get one.
Dr Samuel Jones, director of student health services at JSU, says he’s wondering if the vaccines are going to interfere with people’s DNA, and “maybe I’ll have an extra toe or finger on it. ‘to come up?”
Jones likes to call it vaccine “curiosity” instead of hesitation.
“As people investigating, if we have the right information, maybe it will be, that a person will be armed to make a better decision,” he said.
Many of those who asked him these questions were subsequently vaccinated, Jones said.
CNN’s Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
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