Manatee County is pulling out the stops to encourage people to get their COVID-19 vaccines.
But it may be a struggle for the Manatee population to reach herd immunity.
County information outreach manager Nicholas Azzara told The Islander April 16 that the county launched the #VaxUpManatee campaign April 8 in an effort to increase the number of inoculated residents.
The Manatee County Public Safety and Health departments had vaccinated 156,377 residents as of April 16, according to a COVID-19 report from the same day.
Around 70%-80% of the population must be inoculated for the county to reach herd immunity — the point at which so many people are vaccinated that the virus struggles to spread from person to person — according to Azzara.
Only 38% of Manatee County’s 411,000 residents were vaccinated as of April 16 and demand for the vaccine was on the decline.
Now enters the #VaxUpManatee campaign.
The county launched a #MaskUpManatee campaign last year, during the onset of the novel coronavirus in Florida and the early promotion of mask use. The collaborative effort involves about 50 government, nonprofit and business organizations.
“It’s been really valuable to have everybody pulling in the same direction,” Azzara said. “So we’re going to be calling up that coalition next week to tell them about this and see if they want to be a part of this through social media or other methods.”
The county posted April 8 on social media about the #VaxUpManatee campaign and shared a frame people can apply to images to show they have received a vaccine without showing their vaccination cards and the personal information contained on the cards.
County staff also created stickers to promote the campaign, featuring a manatee with a face mask and a bandage where it received a shot, as a giveaway at vaccination sites.
Azzara said the main objective of the campaign is to combat misinformation about vaccines by hosting events with local medical professionals to address popular misconceptions and vaccine hesitancy, especially among younger crowds.
“The demand just is not there like it was in January and February,” Azzara said. “It was about two weeks ago when we recognized we weren’t getting the kinds of volume of younger people enrolling that we were with the seniors.”
He said the county’s vaccine standby registry filled with thousands of seniors at once when it opened last December to people ages 65 and over and, by March, everyone registered from that age group had been inoculated.
However, when the county lowered the age restriction for the standby registry to 18 and over, it didn’t see the same influx of registrants despite having a similarly sized population.
“I’ll be honest, it was a real surprise to my team,” Azzara said. “It was my guess that we were going to have to try hard to have seniors buy into the vaccination and it was going to be young people that would line up in droves for it, but it’s been the exact opposite.”
“Younger people, for whatever reason, were not as interested in it,” he added.
Azzara said campaign members would attend different upcoming youth group meetings, such as the Manatee Young Professionals, to make presentations promoting the vaccine rollout effort.
“There are a lot of different reasons people are hesitant,” Azzara said. “And that’s perfectly fine — we don’t want to force the vaccine on anybody who’s not interested in having it — but it is our duty as a county to provide information to the public that is accurate.”
The campaign began as the county closed its registry April 12 and prepared to open for a first-come, first-served vaccine distribution event at Tom Bennett Park 8 a.m.-noon Wednesday, April 21.
Patients receiving their first dose at the event will receive their second doses Wednesday, May 19.
The public safety center vaccine site will continue to administer second doses until it closes Friday, April 30, which will leave Tom Bennett Park as the only public vaccination site.
Then the county will assess how long the park vaccination site must remain operational.
Azzara said the #VaxUpManatee campaign would likely continue even if the county’s public safety and health departments close all vaccination sites.
J&J hold nonissue for county rollout
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced April 13 that he would follow the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation to pause the distribution of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines due to clotting concerns.
Due to the hold — which began after six women of the 7 million people vaccinated reported cases of a rare type of blood clot disorder — all state mobile vaccination sites were closed April 17-18.
However, Azzara said the hold wouldn’t have much of an impact for the county’s vaccination sites.
“I can tell you with certainty that zero of the 150,000-160,000 doses that have been administered in the county-operated distribution points were Johnson & Johnson,” Azzara said.
