Daily coronavirus vaccinations have slowed significantly for the first time since February, a sign that demand is slipping even though every American adult is now eligible for the shots.
About 3 million Americans are getting vaccinated daily, an 11 percent decrease in the seven-day average of daily shots administered over the past week. The unprecedented drop is rivaled only by a brief falloff that occurred in February, when winter storms forced the closure of vaccination sites and delayed shipments nationwide.
The downturn hits as half of all eligible Americans have received at least one vaccine dose. And it coincides with the pause last week of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is under review by a panel of experts following a handful of cases of severe blood clotting.
Softening demand also appears to be a factor: Scores of counties from Iowa to Texas have begun to decline vaccine shipments, highlighting issues of hesitancy and barriers to health care that may hamper efforts to reach the levels of protection needed to halt the spread of the coronavirus. ...
The slowdown in shots is concentrated in certain parts of the country, exacerbating the regional divides in vaccinations.
The declines are especially acute across states in the Deep South that already have some of the lowest vaccination rates. Average daily shots plunged by more than 30 percent in Georgia and South Carolina over the past week. Texas reported a 25 percent decline with about 30 percent of its eligible population inoculated.
But the steepest declines have been among small states with relatively high penetration of the vaccines: Maine, Alaska and New Hampshire.
Average daily vaccinations are still climbing, meanwhile, in Delaware, California, Hawaii, Kentucky and Utah, in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Some counties with as few as a quarter of eligible residents fully vaccinated are seeing steady or even increasing coronavirus infections, a harbinger of how inadequate coverage could allow the virus to spread. Most are relatively rural and overwhelmingly Republican. Health officials in these places said they had not expected such anti-vaccine antipathy. ...
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