Poll: Arizonans wary of potential COVID vaccine
PHOENIX – Two new reports suggest that Arizonans will be among the least likely to get immunized against COVID-19 once a vaccine becomes available.
A new poll released Tuesday by OH Predictive Insights finds just 38% of Arizonans said they would get the shots if it were offered to them. An identical number said they would refuse, even if offered for free.
That compares with national surveys showing about half of Americans saying they would get the vaccine, with about 20% refusing.
Separately, the financial advice website WalletHub finds only nine states where the rate of people getting vaccinated for existing diseases already is lower than here. And among children and teens, the vaccination rate is even lower than that, with Arizona fifth from the bottom.
And with the record showing Arizonans tend to be more distrustful of inoculations in general, that suggests the refusal rate here for a COVID-19 vaccine would be higher than most of the rest of the country.
All this comes as new data shows that the coronavirus may once again be on the upswing in Arizona.
New numbers show the state’s R-naught figure at 1.05.
That number represents the effective reproduction rate of the virus, meaning how many secondary infections are likely to occur from a single infection in a given area. Values over 1.0 means more cases are likely; numbers below 1.0 show a declining spread.
That 1.05 is the highest since June 18, right before Gov. Doug Ducey conceded he had made a mistake in allowing certain businesses to reopen and ordered many of them shut. Since then, however, the state now is allowing more businesses to operate, albeit under certain restrictions, even as that R-number
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