Rural areas worry they're being left behind in vaccine push

Some state and local officials say the federal government's decision to punt the coronavirus vaccine rollout to state authorities resulted in delays and mismanagement that hurt hard-hit rural areas, often because states didn't sufficiently involve local authorities. Rural leaders say the rollout would have gone better if they had been more involved.

"President Joe Biden has emphasized getting the Covid-19 vaccine to those most affected by the pandemic, with a focus on racial and ethnic minority groups, such as Blacks and Latinos, who have been dying at higher rates than whites and have thus far been less likely to receive the vaccination," Shannon Pettypiece reports for NBC News. "But in that push, some rural health-care providers say they are being left behind, with many of the steps the White House has taken so far disproportionally benefiting urban areas and not the unique challenges rural areas have been struggling with."

Health-care providers across the nation have complained about not getting enough vaccines for their patients, but in rural areas the need is especially acute. "Rural states have been some of the hardest-hit by the pandemic: The death rate for rural areas was 48 percent higher in December than that of urban areas, according to a study by the Agriculture Department. In North Dakota, about 1 in 500 residents have died from the virus," Pettypiece reports. "Rural areas have borne a greater brunt from the virus in part because they tend to have older populations and a high prevalence of underlying medical conditions, the Agriculture Department report found. People in rural areas may also be more vulnerable because of a lack of nearby medical care or health insurance."

Some county officials say rural outreach would have been better if they had been more involved, especially since access to mass vaccination sites is limited in rural areas, Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene report for Route Fifty. "How to make the vaccine accessible to people is a big issue and you can’t do that from a higher level of government. You can only do that from governments that are closest to the people," Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, told Route Fifty. "If we had been involved earlier and given more local discretion, we could have helped in reaching communities of need."