From JAMAnetwork.com; Published online 01-11-22.
Read Full Article
While millions of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been prevented and hundreds of thousands of lives saved, the pandemic still rages, with US daily case and hospitalization counts hitting record highs beginning right around the anniversary of the first vaccinations outside clinical trials.
On January 6, JAMA Associate Editor Preeti Malani, MD, MSJ, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School and the university’s chief health officer, sat down with Amanda Cohn, MD, of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to discuss the first year of COVID-19 vaccines and what the future of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 might look like.
******
Dr Malani: A year ago, there was this portion of people who immediately wanted to get vaccinated. Then some needed a little time, a little bit of a nudge to feel comfortable, and others had issues with access. What is being done today to turn vaccines into the vaccinations?
Dr Cohn: Our options are getting more limited. Early on, there were barriers to vaccination that I didn’t anticipate: the digital technology that was needed to make appointments, the elderly being able to get to appointments, people who were the most vulnerable having the hardest time accessing vaccines. We were able to address those with support from community organizations. People jumped in and took people to get vaccinated. That was so amazing.
Now we’re shifting to a demand problem. There’s probably still a small minority who may have trouble getting those vaccines, but almost the entire group of unvaccinated people are individuals who have concerns about vaccine safety and just don’t trust vaccines. It’s really hard to convince people with accurate information when they’re getting so much disinformation and misinformation thrown at them. People may not trust CDC.
We need anybody who is in the health care space to tell family and friends and patients, “These vaccines are safe. These vaccines will protect you from what can be a very serious disease and from potentially long-term COVID and things that we still don’t understand.”