70%=No Masks, and Other Ways to Reach the Unvaccinated

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Reaching the unvaccinated means night time visits like this one in Folcroft to distribute shots
Image via Tom Gralish, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Julian Ford gets his shot in Folcroft from nurse Sharisse Stanton-Freeman.

Those who wanted the COVID-19 vaccine, and were able to get to it, have pretty much gotten it. The unvaccinated are a harder sell.

To wrestle COVID to the ground, a major grassroots push is underway to reach the unvaccinated, writes Erin McCarthy and Justine McDaniel for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A Pennsylvania Department of Health announcement may help. The state’s mask mandate will be lifted if 70% of the state’s adults get vaccinated.

The rate on  May 7 was 51%.

But then there are the groups  who can’t easily get to a clinic, center or pharmacy,

For these unvaccinated, the vaccine must be as convenient as possible. It means after-work and night clinics near home, door-to-door visits to earn trust, bringing shots to churches and mosques.

People of color and low-income residents are having a harder time of it without transportation, flexible work hours, caregiving obligations and physical limitations.

“If we want herd immunity, we can’t only think of people who are going to stand in line for six hours or the people who are going to rush to find a location,” said Daveda Graham, cofounder of Nurses United Against COVID-19.  

Her grassroots organization is vaccinating people in Delaware County.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer about efforts to bring the vaccine to everyone.

An NBC10 report talks about the uneven road to recovery brought on by vaccine hesitancy.

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