Potential challenges ahead: Health experts warn of hurdles in next phase of COVID-19 vaccination push

The next phase of coronavirus vaccine campaigns will require reaching Americans who have little access to the shots and those whose jobs make it difficult to take time off to get vaccinated, according to public health experts.

Half of the U.S. adult population is now vaccinated, but getting shots in the arms of the remaining adults is likely to prove much more difficult.

Vaccine distribution has remained uneven as some states struggle with vaccine hesitancy and obstacles like a lack of available local distributors, experts said.

The states that have fully vaccinated the highest number of individuals are primarily located in the Northeast, Midwest and on the West Coast. States like Connecticut and Maine have advanced well past the national average, fully vaccinating more than 60 percent of adults. Several states in the South such as Arkansas and Mississippi have not yet surpassed 40 percent.

Abram Wagner, a research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, said vaccine hesitancy is somewhat contributing to states’ lower vaccination rates, but vaccine access remains a major issue.

“There’s a minority — I think a very small minority — who were very anti-vaccine, would never think about getting it. I still think that the majority of the people who are left, who have not been vaccinated, for a lot of them it’s an issue of convenience,” Wagner said.