Oregon has been steadily administering fewer COVID-19 vaccines over the last few weeks, reflecting a national trend that officials say can be attributed both to less supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and decreased demand in rural counties.
For months, eligible Oregonians clamored for shots, waking up at odd hours of the night in hopes of snagging sporadically available appointments.
Now, appointments in some areas that used to vanish within hours sit available for anyone willing to take them. Some counties are even turning down state deliveries of vaccines, saying they just don’t need any more – all while nearly half of the eligible population has yet to get a shot.
Oregon Health Authority officials last month dreamed of administering 50,000 shots a day. But that’s happened just twice since.
And state data now show a 17% drop in the daily average ofadministered shots.The rollingdaily average fell from the April 11 peak of 42,911 shots to 35,429 April 25, reflecting not only a local, but a national decline in vaccinations.
The health authority, which is leading the state’s response to the pandemic, said it is concerned that many Oregonians are choosing to not get vaccinated.
“While demand still remains strong in many parts of Oregon, we have a long way to go and need everyone to get out and become protected from COVID-19 through vaccination,” health authority spokeswoman Erica Heartquist said in an email, adding that the agency is working with community groups to “build vaccine confidence.”
Of the approximately 4.2 million people living in the state, nearly 30% are fully vaccinated, ranking Oregon 28th in the country. Fewer than 3.5 million are 16 and older – the age of eligibility – meaning 37% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated.
Per current estimates, about 85% of the overall population needs to be vaccinated or have recovered from a COVID-19 infection to reach herd immunity, which is when enough people are protected to dramatically curtail spread of the virus.
The reasons behind Oregon’s recent decline are likely a combination of a drop in both supply and in demand, the state said.
State allocations of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine dropped this month, Heartquist said, helping drive a nearly 20% drop in doses delivered to the state weekly, from an April 1 peak of 257,000 to about 206,000 April 22. The volume of vials sent directly to pharmacies has also declined, from a peak of about 150,000 doses the week of April 8 to about 70,000 a week now.
The decline in Johnson & Johnson doses was anticipated even before federal officials temporarily halted administration of the vaccine because of a one-time surge in vaccine shipments.
To keep vaccinating people at about the same peak rate the state reached earlier this month, Oregon would need to be getting about 300,000 fresh doses every week, Heartquist said.
The federal pause on the one-shot Johnson & Johnson, prompted by fears of potentially fatal side-effects, was likely a “contributing factor” to the decline in supply, Heartquist said, particularly for the retail pharmacies.
Given that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is again approved, Oregon health officials expect at least some numbers to start climbing again in the near future.
Less than a week since the ban was lifted, that change has yet to be seen, however, with less than 1,600 Johnson & Johnson doses reported administered this week, compared to nearly 7,800 in just one day before the ban was put in place.
The state’s vaccination data is known to lag for the most recent days, but it’s clear Johnson & Johnson shots have yet to catch up to earlier levels.
While the re-introduction of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine bodes well for a likely uptick in vaccinations, Oregon could still continue to experience an overall decline driven by factors not as clear-cut as dose supply and federal moratoriums.
If the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is taken out of the equation, state data show a 6% drop in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations April 11 to April 25. Every Oregonian 16 and older didn’t become eligible for a vaccine until April 19.
Some Oregon counties appear to have given shots to just about everyone who has asked for one and have gone so far as to turn down fresh batches offered by the state. Last week, 12 counties turned down doses, telling the state there’s no more demand, Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen told lawmakers at a committee hearing Wednesday.
Those same counties, he said, are among those with the lowest vaccination rates in Oregon.
“That’s highly concerning that counties that are not very far along are also having a hard time finding people to get vaccinated,” Allen said. “And we are going to need to work to address that.”
The change in the last few weeks has been palpable. A few weeks ago, appointments at the mass clinic at the Oregon State Fair and Expo Center in Salem would disappear within hours, Allen said. Now, it’s open season.
“You can pretty much go there any day of the week now and get ample access to appointments,” Allen told lawmakers.
People choosing not to get shots could prove doubly dangerous, because the more people the virus infects, the more opportunities it has to mutate.
“More variants that are more easily transmissible can mean having more people vaccinated as needed to really control that spread,” the state’s chief epidemiologist, Dr. Dean Sidelinger, said at the same hearing attended by Allen.
Still, Allen appeared confident in Oregon’s overall pace vaccinating the population, saying, “We’re actually kind of holding our own in terms of vaccinations.”
Oregon’s drop in average daily administered doses fell 6 percentage points less than the drop seen nationally, and the state’s overall rate so far, at 88,837 shots administered for every 100,000 residents over 18, is 30th in the United States.
Allen did tout some good news, saying that vaccination rates among Latinos are catching up.
About a month ago, Latinx vaccinations rates were less than half of those among Oregonians as a whole, but have since grown to over half, Allen said.
“The tools that we’re using, that we now are working with the community to accelerate, really are working, are generating a more rapid rate of vaccination,” Allen said.
And Banks, director of the state’s public health division, said vaccinations among Latinos are growing at a faster clip than among whites, with 32% more people in the Latinx community vaccinated Monday than April 13, compared to 19% more whites.
Oregon now has a specific benchmark to work toward, committing to vaccinating 80% of the Latinx population by the end of August. The current rate is 21.9% partially or fully vaccinated, compared to 37.6% for whites, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
“Having that North Star has, really, been phenomenal,” said Banks.
