Many States Don ’t Know Who’s Getting COVID-19 Vaccines. That’s a Huge Problem for Equity

As part of its COVID-19 vaccination efforts, the state of Virginia last week assembled a 12-person crack squad to a banal but vital task: data entry. Workers at many of the state’s vaccination sites, especially those in remote areas with limited internet connectivity, have been failing to input information about the people getting inoculated into the state’s database. The new team’s job is to help fix the problem, which has left gaps in state health officials’ understanding of who has been getting the shot—and who has not. “We’ve got to fix the data quality, data accuracy issue,” says Dr. Danny Avula, the director of Virginia’s vaccination effort. Such problems aren’t limited to Virginia. Nationwide, the U.S. vaccination rollout has been plagued by data gaps, which threaten to make it harder to hold leaders accountable for their goals, obfuscate if and when we reach the long-sought goal of herd immunity, and erode public confidence in the entire vaccination process. “The public has the right to know, ‘are we doing a good job or not?'” says Avula. “The more people know, the less they will make up, and therefore the less fear and anxiety will be disbursed in the community.” Moreover, the lack of adequate vaccination data could undermine efforts to ensure racial and ethnic equity in the process, further exacerbating pandemic-driven disparities. While some states are doing better than oth...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news