Iowans who want them can get them. Is that enough?
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds gets the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine during a televised news conference March 3 at Iowa PBS in Johnston. (Zach Boyden-Holmes/Des Moines Register via AP)
DES MOINES — The good news is almost any adult in Iowa who wants the COVID-19 vaccine can now get it. The bad news is that’s because demand for the vaccine has dropped precipitously.
Lessened demand is not unique to Iowa; it’s something most states are dealing with.
That’s not all bad news. It does mean that the people who felt strongly about getting the vaccine have done so.
As of Sunday, more than 1.1 million Iowans were fully vaccinated from COVID-19 and over 45 percent of Iowa’s eligible population was fully vaccinated. The share of he entire population that’s vaccinated is 13th-best in the country, according to the Washington Post tracker that uses federal data.
Those are all very good things.
But demand for the vaccine continues to slow across much of the state, and if that trend does not change it will prove difficult, if not impossible, for Iowa’s population to reach a point where public health officials feel confident the disease will be unable to spread here.
Because COVID-19 is a new virus, experts are not sure what portion of the population needs to be vaccinated before herd immunity is reached. Most educated guesses have been in the range of 70 percent and up.
Only 11 counties accepted their full allotment of COVID-19 vaccines for this week. Because they still had doses left over from previous shipments, 34 counties accepted just a portion of their new allotments, and 54 counties, more than half the state, did not need any new doses at all.
That’s a troubling trend for anyone who wants to put this virus behind them, as we all should. And while the numbers are down, the fight is not over. Iowans are still dying of the virus. And last week the state confirmed the third COVID-19 death of an Iowa child, again under age 5.
To their credit, state and local officials are working on ways to boost vaccinations. Pop-up clinics are being set up at community events that draw crowds, like farmers markets and minor league baseball games. Gov. Kim Reynolds said a state public information campaign is in the works.
We all remember what last summer was like. It was not great. Now, COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have all plummeted from the dangerous levels they were this past winter. And Iowans are getting vaccinated.
Let’s hope those trends keep on their current trajectory, and that the trend of growing vaccine hesitancy reverses course. Full ballparks, concert venues and theaters await. Let’s do all we can to get there.
Erin Murphy covers Iowa politics and government. His column appears Monday in The Gazette. Reach him at erin.murphy@lee.net and follow him on Twitter at @ErinDMurphy.
"bad" - Google News
May 10, 2021 at 07:30PM
https://ift.tt/2RHeZ6F
Capitol Ideas column: Bad news tempers good news on COVID-19 vaccines - The Gazette
"bad" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SpwJRn
https://ift.tt/2z7gkKJ
No comments:
Post a Comment