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The Wall Street Journal
SOUTHERN STATES URGE COVID-19 VACCINES AS THE DELTA VARIANT SURGES
Robbie Whelan - 1 hr ago
Arkansas and other Southern states have emerged as crucial battlegrounds in efforts by state and local officials to persuade enough unvaccinated Americans to get Covid-19 shots to arrest a national surge in coronavirus infections. Arkansas now has the second-highest rate of new daily Covid-19 cases in the country, after Louisiana.
The highly contagious Delta variant that dominates the surge has been especially devastating to states in the South and Midwest, including Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri, as well as Arkansas. All of those states except Florida have full vaccination rates well below the national average of 58% of eligible people.
On Thursday, President Biden announced a vaccine mandate for all federal employees and urged state governors to begin offering $100 payments to patients who get vaccine doses as an incentive to help boost the U.S. vaccination rate, which didn’t meet the administration’s goal to have 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
Vaccination rates in Arkansas rose rapidly earlier this year but “flatlined” starting in early April, said Col. Rob Ator, a retired Air National Guard commander tapped by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson to lead the state’s vaccination effort. Mr. Hutchinson has been traveling the state in recent weeks to give talks promoting vaccination. Arkansas’s full vaccination rate for residents age 12 and up is 42.5%.
Most people who were eager to get the vaccines have gotten them, Col. Ator said, adding that he is now targeting the “movable middle”: the roughly 30% of Arkansans who he says are undecided about the vaccine or waiting for more information, including seeing friends and family members safely inoculated.
Arkansas has spent $6 million on ads promoting vaccination in traditional media outlets and on social media, targeting residents of small towns and rural areas, as well as young people who Col. Ator said have considered themselves “bulletproof” against serious cases of Covid-19. Since the emergence of the Delta variant, the average age of hospitalized patients has fallen by 12 years, Col. Ator said.
Public-health authorities are working with churches, local business groups and historically Black fraternities and sororities to spread the word.
“Hanging a sign saying, ‘Come get the vaccine’ just wasn’t doing it,” Col. Ator said. “The messaging has to be down at the lowest level.”
The effort might be working. Demand for vaccines in Arkansas rose 54% in the past two weeks, Col. Ator said. On July 22, the state beat its one-day record for vaccine doses administered by 3,000, with 14,000 shots given across the state, according to state health officials.
“That has everything to do with fear of the Delta variant,” Col. Ator said. “My biggest concern is that we’re a month too late on this thing.”
In Fort Smith—the state’s second-largest city, with a population of nearly 90,000—Mayor George McGill has devoted most of his weekly radio show over the past month to urging residents to get vaccinated. Demand for the vaccine in Sebastian County, where the city is located, plateaued in May, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data.
“I wish we had a message that would resonate loudly and clearly,” Mr. McGill said.
The city has ramped up its spending on billboards and radio and television advertising. The county’s first-dose vaccination rate rose 6 percentage points in July, from 30% to 36%, after rising just 1.8 percentage points in June, according to the Journal’s analysis. On Tuesday, a vaccine clinic at a local mall drew 159 patients for their first shots.
Resistance to the vaccines is driven by misinformation, apathy and politics, public-health experts and state officials said. At a recent town-hall meeting in Mountain Home, an Ozark Mountain tourist town in Baxter County, attendees booed Mr. Hutchinson and heckled state epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha after both said there is no evidence the vaccines cause fertility problems.
Baxter County has the state’s highest seven-day average rate of new daily cases at 104 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as one of the state’s highest rates of new Covid-19 deaths.
Across the U.S., 97% of people hospitalized for Covid-19 treatment are unvaccinated, according to CDC director Rochelle Walensky. The CDC says 99.5% of Covid-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated.
Officials in Mississippi this month urged all residents age 65 or older to avoid large indoor gatherings, regardless of vaccine status. On Wednesday, Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, Mo., said the city would reinstate its mask mandate starting Aug. 2 in response to a surge in Covid-19 cases. St. Louis on Monday implemented a mask mandate that was challenged quickly by the St. Louis County Council.
At the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, the monoclonal antibody clinic—which administers infusions to patients who test positive for Covid-19—is booked solid and can’t take new patients, said Jeanne Marrazzo, a physician who leads the infectious-diseases division of UAB’s medical school.
On July 25, a 30-year-old expectant mother died from Covid-19 at the hospital, leaving behind her premature baby in the neonatal intensive-care unit. The woman’s family, along with public-health officials and doctors in Alabama, have been encouraging vaccinations via social-media posts highlighting the case as a cautionary tale.
“We’re basically having to resort to scare tactics,” Dr. Marrazzo said.
Just 34.1% of Alabama residents are fully vaccinated, the lowest level of any U.S. state, according to the CDC. The state has the sixth-highest rate of average new daily cases.
Dr. Marrazzo said the hurdles to educating more Alabamians to get shots are high. “It’s not the kind of place where there’s a friendly neighborhood clinic on every corner and you can walk in and say, ‘I’d like to talk to you for 15 minutes about my vaccine hesitancy.’ ”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/southern-st...d=msedgntp
The Wall Street Journal
SOUTHERN STATES URGE COVID-19 VACCINES AS THE DELTA VARIANT SURGES
Robbie Whelan - 1 hr ago
Arkansas and other Southern states have emerged as crucial battlegrounds in efforts by state and local officials to persuade enough unvaccinated Americans to get Covid-19 shots to arrest a national surge in coronavirus infections. Arkansas now has the second-highest rate of new daily Covid-19 cases in the country, after Louisiana.
The highly contagious Delta variant that dominates the surge has been especially devastating to states in the South and Midwest, including Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri, as well as Arkansas. All of those states except Florida have full vaccination rates well below the national average of 58% of eligible people.
On Thursday, President Biden announced a vaccine mandate for all federal employees and urged state governors to begin offering $100 payments to patients who get vaccine doses as an incentive to help boost the U.S. vaccination rate, which didn’t meet the administration’s goal to have 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
Vaccination rates in Arkansas rose rapidly earlier this year but “flatlined” starting in early April, said Col. Rob Ator, a retired Air National Guard commander tapped by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson to lead the state’s vaccination effort. Mr. Hutchinson has been traveling the state in recent weeks to give talks promoting vaccination. Arkansas’s full vaccination rate for residents age 12 and up is 42.5%.
Most people who were eager to get the vaccines have gotten them, Col. Ator said, adding that he is now targeting the “movable middle”: the roughly 30% of Arkansans who he says are undecided about the vaccine or waiting for more information, including seeing friends and family members safely inoculated.
Arkansas has spent $6 million on ads promoting vaccination in traditional media outlets and on social media, targeting residents of small towns and rural areas, as well as young people who Col. Ator said have considered themselves “bulletproof” against serious cases of Covid-19. Since the emergence of the Delta variant, the average age of hospitalized patients has fallen by 12 years, Col. Ator said.
Public-health authorities are working with churches, local business groups and historically Black fraternities and sororities to spread the word.
“Hanging a sign saying, ‘Come get the vaccine’ just wasn’t doing it,” Col. Ator said. “The messaging has to be down at the lowest level.”
The effort might be working. Demand for vaccines in Arkansas rose 54% in the past two weeks, Col. Ator said. On July 22, the state beat its one-day record for vaccine doses administered by 3,000, with 14,000 shots given across the state, according to state health officials.
“That has everything to do with fear of the Delta variant,” Col. Ator said. “My biggest concern is that we’re a month too late on this thing.”
In Fort Smith—the state’s second-largest city, with a population of nearly 90,000—Mayor George McGill has devoted most of his weekly radio show over the past month to urging residents to get vaccinated. Demand for the vaccine in Sebastian County, where the city is located, plateaued in May, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data.
“I wish we had a message that would resonate loudly and clearly,” Mr. McGill said.
The city has ramped up its spending on billboards and radio and television advertising. The county’s first-dose vaccination rate rose 6 percentage points in July, from 30% to 36%, after rising just 1.8 percentage points in June, according to the Journal’s analysis. On Tuesday, a vaccine clinic at a local mall drew 159 patients for their first shots.
Resistance to the vaccines is driven by misinformation, apathy and politics, public-health experts and state officials said. At a recent town-hall meeting in Mountain Home, an Ozark Mountain tourist town in Baxter County, attendees booed Mr. Hutchinson and heckled state epidemiologist Jennifer Dillaha after both said there is no evidence the vaccines cause fertility problems.
Baxter County has the state’s highest seven-day average rate of new daily cases at 104 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as one of the state’s highest rates of new Covid-19 deaths.
Across the U.S., 97% of people hospitalized for Covid-19 treatment are unvaccinated, according to CDC director Rochelle Walensky. The CDC says 99.5% of Covid-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated.
Officials in Mississippi this month urged all residents age 65 or older to avoid large indoor gatherings, regardless of vaccine status. On Wednesday, Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, Mo., said the city would reinstate its mask mandate starting Aug. 2 in response to a surge in Covid-19 cases. St. Louis on Monday implemented a mask mandate that was challenged quickly by the St. Louis County Council.
At the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, the monoclonal antibody clinic—which administers infusions to patients who test positive for Covid-19—is booked solid and can’t take new patients, said Jeanne Marrazzo, a physician who leads the infectious-diseases division of UAB’s medical school.
On July 25, a 30-year-old expectant mother died from Covid-19 at the hospital, leaving behind her premature baby in the neonatal intensive-care unit. The woman’s family, along with public-health officials and doctors in Alabama, have been encouraging vaccinations via social-media posts highlighting the case as a cautionary tale.
“We’re basically having to resort to scare tactics,” Dr. Marrazzo said.
Just 34.1% of Alabama residents are fully vaccinated, the lowest level of any U.S. state, according to the CDC. The state has the sixth-highest rate of average new daily cases.
Dr. Marrazzo said the hurdles to educating more Alabamians to get shots are high. “It’s not the kind of place where there’s a friendly neighborhood clinic on every corner and you can walk in and say, ‘I’d like to talk to you for 15 minutes about my vaccine hesitancy.’ ”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/southern-st...d=msedgntp
