Vaccination rates are falling in the United States, despite the
spread of highly contagious virus variants that are fueling a national caseload
that remains high enough to underscore concerns of the potential for a new
surge.
اضافة اعلان
More than 50,000 new US cases were reported Saturday, and case
rates are similar to those of the second wave last summer, though they have
fallen significantly from the third wave over the winter. But the average
number of vaccine doses being administered each day, which rose for months and
peaked at 3.38 million, has now dropped to 2.86 million, its lowest level since
March 31, according to data from the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
The vaccination rate stopped climbing on April 13, when federal
health officials recommended pausing the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine
to allow researchers to examine a rare blood-clotting disorder that emerged in
six recipients.
The Food and Drug Administration lifted the pause Friday,
opting to add a warning about the risk to vaccine labeling.
Experts aren’t sure why vaccination rates have begun falling, or
whether vaccine hesitancy, an issue before the Johnson & Johnson pause, is
entirely to blame. They suggest the issue is more complicated. Many Americans
who were eager and able to be vaccinated have now been inoculated, experts
believe, and among the unvaccinated, some are totally opposed while others
would get a vaccine if it were more accessible to them.
Whatever the reason for the slowdown in vaccinations, it could
delay the arrival of herd immunity, the point at which the coronavirus cannot
spread easily because it cannot find enough vulnerable people to infect. The
longer that takes, the more time there is for dangerous variants to arise and
possibly evade vaccines.
Elected leaders and public health officials are left struggling to
tailor their messages, and their tactics, to persuade not only the vaccine
hesitant but also the indifferent. As mass vaccination sites begin to close,
more patients could get vaccinated by their own doctors, with whom people are
most at ease — a shift that would require the Biden administration to
distribute the vaccines in much smaller shipments to many more providers.
Resuming use of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine
should help with hard-to-reach populations like Americans in remote
communities, migrants and older people who may have difficulty leaving their
homes.
White House and state health officials are calling the next phase
of the vaccination campaign “the ground game,” and are likening it to a
get-out-the-vote effort.
“We’re entering a new phase” in the country’s vaccination effort,
said Dr. Mark McClellan, former commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration and director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at
Duke University.
“Now, it’s more about bringing vaccines to the people who want
them but haven’t been able to easily reach the existing sites,” McClellan said.
Walk-in availability, which New York City allowed at city-run sites starting
Friday, could also help vaccinate more people, he said.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public
Health, cautioned that it would be “hugely problematic” to broadly denounce
those who had yet to get a vaccine — because of indifference or inconvenience —
as “resisters.” He said on National Public Radio last week that “there are lots
of people who are perfectly happy to get a vaccine but aren’t desperate for it
— aren’t convinced that they need it badly.”
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