As public health departments close down mass vaccination clinics because of low turnout, they are seeking new ways to reach people. In Austin, a group of vaccinators that distributed fewer doses than expected at a school festival set up shop in a nearby El Rancho grocery parking lot to offer shots to shoppers. After the store manager learned what was happening, almost three dozen workers went out to be vaccinated.
“Everyone wanted to get vaccinated,” said Karim Nafal, the store’s owner, “but didn’t know how or where.”
And in Cleveland, the alliance between the church group, volunteer vaccinators and the city’s public health department led to Mr. Grayson getting a vaccine on a recent morning. Hired to do a paint job at the Lee Road church, he was told that vaccines were available down the hall if he wanted one.
“Come on,” Mr. Grayson urged two unvaccinated co-workers, who also offered up their arms. “It’s right here.”
About the data: County vaccination data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Texas Department of State Health Services. County vaccination data was unavailable from the C.D.C. for Hawaii and some counties. Colorado, Georgia, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia were excluded from the analysis because more than a quarter of the vaccination data for each of those states is missing.
High vulnerability is defined as a score above 0.5 on the C.D.C.’s Social Vulnerability Index. In the analysis of most and least vulnerable counties, each quartile contains 25 percent of the U.S. population.
The C.D.C.’s county-level hesitancy estimates are based on data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from March 3 to March 15, 2021. High hesitancy is defined as more than the national average of 16 percent of a county’s population saying they “probably won’t” or “definitely won’t” receive a vaccination. Non-hesitant is defined as those saying they “probably will” or “definitely will” receive a vaccination, or have already been vaccinated. The averages given for each group are a population-weighted median.
National vaccination estimates by household income are based on data from the Census Bureau’s latest Household Pulse Survey, which was conducted from April 14 to April 26.
Reporting was contributed by Danielle Ivory, Timmy Facciola, Tiffany Wong, Julia Carmel and Emily Schwing.
