A drop in demand led more than half of the counties in Kansas to decline their weekly allotment of COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The Associated Press reported that 62 out of Kansas’s 105 counties turned down their weekly allotment of doses last week, falling in line with a trend seen across the U.S. in which vaccine supply has outpaced demand.
A spokesperson for Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) said many Kansas residents are delaying getting their vaccines due to the drop in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the Sunflower State, according to the AP.
Kansas state officials are planning to roll out a campaign to encourage those who are indifferent or hesitant to get the vaccine to get immunized, the AP reports, with plans to target younger people who are making up a larger portion of new cases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kansas has administered almost 2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines. At least 37.5 percent of the state’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
The AP earlier reported that states such as Louisiana and Mississippi have asked the federal government to stop sending their full allotments of vaccines due to dwindling demand among their residents.
The U.S.’s vulnerability to the virus has slowly dropped as vaccine administration expands and more people gain immunity to COVID-19. However, multiple health experts have warned that the threat posed by COVID-19 variants is still present and the best way to prevent a new outbreak from the more infectious strains is to get immunized.
Nationally, more than a quarter of all American adults are fully immunized against the coronavirus, according to the CDC. In order to reach herd immunity, health experts have said that around 70 to possibly 90 percent of the U.S. population will need to be protected against the coronavirus.