Adult residents of the Mississippi Delta are less likely to get vaccinated for the novel coronavirus than Mississippi adults at large, according to a survey by the Mississippi State Department of Health.
The department administered a vaccine hesitancy survey from late December through March in order to understand Mississippians’ perceptions of the vaccine and the respiratory disease.
The results are being used to assist with outreach to increase vaccination rates across the state. Vaccination is considered to be the best method to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Overall, there were more than 11,000 responses across all of Mississippi’s 82 counties.
Dr. Victor Sutton, director of the state Health Department’s Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity, worked on the survey project. He said about 3,100 results were collected from the Delta’s 18-county region, including almost 400 people from Leflore County.
Within the Delta, 60% of adults residents responded that they planned to get vaccinated for COVID-19, 24% of adults said they were unsure and 16% said they would not get the vaccine.
Sutton said 60% of adult men in the Delta would be willing to get vaccinated versus 57% of adult woman. Among whites, 81% in the Delta said they would get vaccinated; among Blacks, the figure was 49%.
Education and income also seem to play a role in how Delta residents intend to get their shots, Sutton said.
Those with a high school diploma or less are two to four times more likely to not get vaccinated, he said.
Those who make $40,000 or less per year are twice as likely not to want to get vaccinated, while those who make less than $20,000 per year are nearly four times less likely to get vaccinated, Sutton said.
Within Leflore County, Sutton said 51% of surveyed residents said they probably or definitely would get vaccinated, while 26% reported that they were unsure and 23% said they definitely would not.
For the state at large, 73.2% of adults said they intend to get vaccinated, 16.6% said they were unsure and 10.2% said no, according to the survey.
An executive summary of the survey concluded that the Delta region “is in proportionately greater need of COVID-19-related outreach and education in comparison to the rest of the state.”
Sutton said the state Health Department is still interested in partnering with community organizations to host vaccination events. The Greenwood Community Center partnered with Greenwood Leflore Hospital to host such an event in mid-May.
Among those encouraging others to get vaccinated is Greenwood resident Michael Bland, who spent three decades serving in the U.S. Army and the National Guard.
He received his COVID-19 vaccination shots early in the year at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jackson.
“Thirty years in the military, I’m used to taking shots, and it never bothered me,” Bland said.
In Leflore County, 37% of the population has been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 as of Thursday, according to the state Health Department’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker. Statewide, 28% had been fully vaccinated.
Nationwide, 41.2% of the population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The full results of the state vaccine hesitancy survey may be viewed at msdh.ms.gov/msdhsite/_static/resources/13827.pdf.
- Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
