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ATLANTA (AP) – Coronavirus vaccines have been unevenly deployed across the United States, but four states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates that have alarmed health experts and frustrated residents .
In Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, less than 2% of the population had received their first dose of the vaccine earlier this week, according to data from the States and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States .
As in other parts of the country, southern states face a number of challenges: limited vaccine supplies, healthcare workers who refuse to be vaccinated, and bureaucratic systems that are not equipped to plan for large numbers. appointments sought.
But other states have still managed – at their best – to get vaccines into the arms of more than 5% of their populations.
While it is not clear why the Deep South is falling behind, public health researchers note that it has generally fallen behind in funding public health and addressing disparities in care for its greater part. rural population.
“When you combine a large percentage of rural residents who tend to be hard-to-reach populations and have fewer providers trying to build a vaccination infrastructure on the fly, that’s just a recipe for a not-so-good response. . Said Sarah McCool, professor of public health at Georgia State University.
In Georgia, the state’s rural health system has been decimated in recent years, with nine hospital closures since 2008, including two last year. Local health departments have become the main providers of vaccines in some places, as officials work to add sites where doses can be administered.
“If we’re the only game in town, this process is going to take a long time,” Lawton Davis, director of a large public health district that includes Savannah, said at a press conference Monday.
The district had to stop making appointments amid a surge of requests after Georgia opened up the vaccine to people over 65. Other health districts in the state have seen their websites collapse.
Alabama and Mississippi have also been hit hard by rural hospital closures. Seven hospitals have closed in Alabama since 2009 and six in Mississippi since 2005, according to researchers at the Sheps Center at the University of North Carolina. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi rank in the bottom five U.S. states for their access to healthcare, according to a 2020 report from a nonprofit foundation linked to insurance giant UnitedHealth.
But overall, experts say it’s too early in the vaccine rollout to draw any conclusions about the region’s gaps, and they can’t easily be attributed to any particular factor or trend.
“We’re kind of building this plane while we’re flying, and there will be some missteps along the way,” said Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who has followed the release of vaccines in the South.
State officials cited a number of challenges, but also recognized shortcomings.
“We have too many vaccines distributed that are not yet in arms,” said Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, who noted that some hospitals in the state are not using their vaccine doses. He said the practice “must stop”.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp cited a similar challenge and warned vaccine suppliers that the state would take their unused doses even if it required “pulling” his van and doing it himself.
But in South Carolina, hospital officials say it’s the state that has moved too slowly to expand access to vaccinations, leaving them with unused doses. The state recently offered the vaccine to people aged 70 and over.
Reeves of Mississippi said that one of the biggest weaknesses in the state’s immunization system is the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens to deliver vaccines in long-term care facilities. Drugstore chains have been slow to hire enough people to do the job in Mississippi, the governor said.
CVS Health said in a statement that it has “the appropriate resources to complete the job” in long-term care facilities. Walgreens did not respond to an email.
In an online forum hosted by Jackson State University in Mississippi on Thursday, U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams, who is black, noted the reluctance of many African Americans to be vaccinated. He cited a general distrust of medical systems stemming from a now defunct government study that began in the 1930s that left black men untreated for syphilis for decades.
So far, only 15% of COVID-19 vaccinations in Mississippi have gone to blacks, who make up about 38% of the population, public health official Dr Thomas Dobbs said at the forum.
Officials in the four states also said some healthcare workers – among the first groups eligible for a vaccine – are choosing not to be vaccinated. And some pointed out that states were facing limited supplies and high demand, and pleaded with people to be patient.
“Yes, the phone lines will be busy. Yes, websites are definitely going to go down, ”Kemp said on Tuesday. “There are just a lot more Georgians who want the vaccine than can get it today.”
Mississippi officials said the state’s website and helpline were overwhelmed after the governor announced on Tuesday that vaccines were available to people 65 years of age or older or those with problems underlying health.
Liz Cleveland, a 67-year-old retired state worker who lives in Jackson, has waited hours on the website using her cell phone, computer and tablet only to encounter unknown errors.
“It’s like the game. You can hit or you can bust,” Cleveland said.
Around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, she was finally able to make appointments for herself and her husband next week in Hattiesburg, which is 90 miles away. Mississippi officials said Thursday they will soon open an additional drive-thru site for vaccinations in the state’s largest county.
Alabama officials have also been inundated with meeting requests since it was announced that the state will begin vaccinating people over 75 next week. A state hotline received more than a million calls on the first day it opened.
Celia O’Kelley from Tuscaloosa said she couldn’t contact anyone to get a date for her 95-year-old mother.
“I’m scared because Tuscaloosa is a hot spot,” she says.
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Associated Press editors Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; and Michelle Liu of Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
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