The U.S. Is Entering a New COVID-19 Vaccination Crisis

In the past three weeks, every adult in the U.S. has become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, which are now widely available in most parts of the country. Yet there has been an alarming decline in the number of Americans showing up to get vaccinated, even though less than half of the population has received even a single dose. While data on the progress of the vaccine rollout are difficult to parse given the many moving pieces, this is almost certainly a sign that a large number of adults remain vaccine hesitant. In the first several months of the rollout, as states debugged the complex logistics of distributing their allotted vaccines, the population of people eager for a shot vastly outnumbered the awaiting syringes. Now, supply clearly outweighs demand. After cresting at over 2 million on April 13, the number of people receiving their first dose of a vaccine each day—the best metric to show real-time vaccine hesitancy—has stood below 1 million for more than a week: Before declaring a crisis in vaccine hesitancy, let’s consider an alternate explanation: Could there be a bottleneck in availability as a vastly larger population of people have become eligible? Unlikely. The total number of doses allocated to the states each week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has remained steady at about 18 million since early April, and states have recently been using around 75-80% of the doses they have ordered. In fact, some states are now ordering few...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news