Vaccine hesitancy more prevalent in rural America

Kaiser Family Foundation chart, based on December data from KFF Vaccine Monitor; click on the image to enlarge it.

Rural Americans are among the most hesitant to receive the coronavirus vaccine, according to December findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor.

"Getting shots into arms in rural Americans, most of whom see getting the vaccine as a personal choice and not a social responsibility to protect others, is a problem that will require tailored outreach and messaging. It underscores that a cookie cutter approach to vaccine hesitancy campaigns will not work," Drew Altman writes for KFF.

Farmworkers are in a priority group and are slated to get their shots  soon, but public-health officials worry that reluctance among such workers might delay herd immunity, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. A University of California Berkeley School of Public Health study this summer found that over 30% of farmworkers were unsure about the vaccine or unlikely to get it. 

Some rural health-care workers are reluctant to get the vaccine, too. Though hundreds of health-care workers in Atlanta, for example, are on waiting lists to get vaccinated, vaccines are sitting unused in freezers in rural parts of the state, Jonathan Raymond reports for WXIA-TV in Atlanta.