U.S. vaccinations ‘kind of stalling’
JACKSON, Miss. — Louisiana has stopped asking the federal government for its full allotment of COVID-19 vaccine. About threequarters of Kansas counties have turned down new shipments of the vaccine at least once over the past month. And in Mississippi, officials asked the federal government to ship vials in smaller packages so they don’t go to waste.
As the supply of coronavirus vaccine doses in the U.S. outpaces demand, some places around the country are finding there’s such little interest in the shots, they need to turn down shipments.
“It is kind of stalling. Some people just don’t want it,” said Stacey Hileman, a nurse with the health department in rural Kansas’ Decatur County, where less than a third of the county’s 2,900 residents have received at least one vaccine dose.
The dwindling demand for vaccines illustrates the challenge that the U.S. faces in trying to conquer the pandemic while at the same time dealing with the optics of tens of thousands of doses sitting on shelves when countries such as India and Brazil are in the midst of full-blown medical emergencies.
Across the country, pharmacists and public health officials are seeing the demand wane and supplies build up. About half of Iowa’s counties have stopped asking for new doses from the state, and Louisiana didn’t seek shipment of some vaccine doses over the past week.
Some are urging federal officials to send more vaccine to places where there’s demand — rather than allocate them based on population — including Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who said Thursday they could administer two to three times more doses per day if they had more supply.
More than 1.7 million COVID-19 vaccine doses are headed Texas’ way for next week, state health officials said Friday.
But in Mississippi, small-town pharmacist Robin Jackson has been practically begging anyone in the community to show up and get shots after she received her first shipment of vaccine earlier this month and demand was so weak that she was wasting more vaccine than she was giving out.
“Nobody was coming,” she said. “And I mean no one.”