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LAPLACE, Louisiana – Coming off the busy airline freeway, as drivers walk to a gas station, there is a total effort to get them to roll up their sleeves.
“We’ve been everywhere, all over the state,” said Torris Johnson, supervisor of a community health worker.
That day, Johnson is in LaPlace, Louisiana, in one of the so-called “river parishes” west of New Orleans. It is a state where vaccine hesitation is all too real.
“There are still a lot of myths about the vaccine, about ‘it’s not a good thing’ and ‘it hasn’t been tested enough’,” Johnson said.
It’s hard to sell.
Officials say a general distrust of government may be partly to blame, along with a higher number of rural communities and a combination of lower education and income levels. According to the US census, about 20% of Louisiana’s people live below the poverty line, the second highest in the entire country.
Now officials are trying to sell the vaccine to residents, literally, with cash.
They try all kinds of incentives to get people to get the COVID-19 shot, from free entry to state parks to $ 100,000 a week giveaways in July, and even a grand prize d ‘one million dollars.
Yet it is an uphill battle.
The problem is not just in Louisiana. In parts of the West, but mainly in the South, states are lagging behind in their immunization numbers.
According to the Mayo Clinic, those with the lowest percentage of people who received a dose are Mississippi (35%), Louisiana (37%), Wyoming (38%), Alabama (39%) and Idaho (39%).
The numbers are even more dismal when you look at how many are fully vaccinated against COVID, with many of those same states showing that a third or less of their residents are fully vaccinated: Mississippi (29%), Alabama (31%), Arkansas ( 33%), Louisiana (33%) and Wyoming (33%).
These low numbers put the brakes on the country’s overall COVID vaccination rate. This casts real doubt that the United States will meet President Biden’s goal of getting at least a 70 percent dose of people by July 4. Officials are already looking beyond that date.
“We will continue to push the vaccination beyond July 4th, until the summer, so get as many people vaccinated as possible,” said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Disease. infectious.
For Torris Johnson, that will likely mean more vaccination efforts in the field like the one at LaPlace.
“It’s just going to take all of our effort, all of our combined effort until we can finally get this thing under control,” Johnson said. “We are still fighting an uphill battle, but we are still fighting a good fight.”
It is a team effort required of every state in the war against COVID-19.
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