COVID-19 vaccine supply has begun to outpace demand at clinics across the state and country, according to health experts.
That’s a bad sign because communities are still a long way from herd immunity.
The health departments for Tippecanoe, Fountain, and Warren counties plan to reduce vaccination clinic hours because of a drop in demand.
Experts say the people who were eager to get a vaccine likely already have. In Fountain and Warren counties full vaccination rates have hovered around 30% of the population. In Tippecanoe County, that number has been closer to 20%.
Health officials in Tippecanoe County also noted that they saw an uptick in vaccine appointment no-shows following the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has since been lifted.
Natalia Rodriguez is a Public Health professor at Purdue.
“We’ve reached the point here everyone who was desperate to get vaccinated got vaccinated and then people who were willing to get vaccinated and waiting their turn are also pretty much [vaccinated],” she said.
Rodriquez said increasing vaccination will likely require education and outreach.
“Sign-ups have been complicated, there haven’t been that many walk-in places available, we need to address people’s questions and meet them where they are,” she said.
Health experts have suggested that in order to achieve herd immunity roughly 70% of people will need to be vaccinated. After that, the expectation has been that life can at least somewhat return to normal.
But Rodriguez said that reaching herd immunity is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
“It’s not like on a particular date we all get to fling our masks in the air,” she said. “We’re never going to get over this pandemic if we can’t get the entire world vaccinated. Right now you have huge discrepancies in vaccine distribution… until that changes it’s going to continue to be a threat to everybody.”
An NPR analysis last week showed that while over 40% of the US has received at least one shot, many other large countries such as India, Mexico, China, and Russia are hovering around 10%.
Most African nations have seen less than 1% of their populations receive a single dose of the vaccine.
In Indiana, close to two million people have already been fully vaccinated. A spokesperson for the state health department said that they still have “ample” vaccine appointments.
“We continue to use all tools at our disposal to ensure that we are getting doses to eligible Hoosiers as quickly and efficiently as possible,” the spokesperson said.
Sean Sharma is the Health Officer for the Fountain and Warren County Health Department.
“We’re at this point in time where those people who haven’t been vaccinated yet need to have conversations with individuals that they trust,” he said. “Hopefully those are medical providers who are educated about the risks and benefits of the vaccination and can encourage those individuals to get vaccinated.”
Sharma said he understands having some hesitancy and encourages people to educate themselves.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not someone who normally has much vaccine hesitancy but when I got my first dose in December I didn’t do it blindly,” he said. “I had some worry but my feeling is that someone has to be among the first people to get vaccinated. We’re really beyond that point.”