For VA, where veterans live is a bigger factor in refusing COVID vaccines than race

Veterans Affairs officials said they see some groups of veterans turning down opportunities to get the coronavirus vaccine, but it’s not necessarily the individuals they expected to struggle to convince.

“In communities of color, we actually exceed what we are in the white population of America,” said Dr. Richard Stone, acting chief of the Veterans Health Administration, in a testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on Friday. “I am very happy with how black and Spanish veterans are accepting the vaccine.”

For months, health officials have warned that convincing minority groups across the country to get the dual coronavirus vaccine could pose a special challenge. A recent report from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, which sought to find out why blacks are less likely to take the vaccine, found that several factors played a role in fueling deficiency to trust.

“Between mistrust, misinformation, and COVID management that hasn’t always protected the most vulnerable (think unfair test assignments and vaccination sites), how surprising is it that black communities have lower vaccine acceptance?” asked the study authors. An Associated Press survey in December found that only 24 percent of Black Americans and 34 percent of Hispanic Americans intended to receive the vaccine, as opposed to 53 percent of White Americans.

But Stone said VA thankfully hasn’t seen that predicted problem. Instead, the most reluctant groups in their work to date appear to be rural veterans, who may already face significant challenges in terms of access to health care and vaccine availability.

In part of New York alone, more than 1,000 veterans over the age of 75 said ‘no thank you.’ And that surprised us, ”he said.

Kameron Matthews, assistant under secretary for health at VA, said officials have begun to assemble focus groups on the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy because “our rural population has differences across all age groups that we definitely need to address.”

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The department has already administered about 2 million doses of vaccine since mid-December. In some locations, nearly all VA staff and high-risk veteran patients have already completed the two-dose regimen.

But Stone said it is still a “huge effort” to get the vaccines to rural veterans, especially given that the first versions of the vaccine require hypothermic temperatures for storage.

“This has been a tough one,” he said. “” We’re not doing very well with rural veterans or reaching out to them as we would like. “

Congressmen speculated that the problem with lower vaccine acceptance in rural areas may not have to do with mistrust, but instead with travel issues.

Even if mobile veteran centers have helped push VAs totals to more than 300 distribution locations across the country, reaching a vaccination appointment can still be an hour’s drive for veterans, many of whom are elderly.

Stone promised further research and improvements in the coming weeks. The department expects to distribute vaccines to nearly 7 million people in the coming months, covering nearly every veteran who is an active VA health care user.

However, lawmakers expressed concern that other veterans who don’t regularly use VA medical care, but don’t have access to the vaccines elsewhere, may be falling short. Stone said decisions about that are left to the availability of vaccines.

“Our ability to reach this veteran population is based entirely on supply,” he said. “Our desire to get the vaccine to as many veterans as we can.”

More than 220,000 patients followed by VA have contracted the coronavirus in the past 11 months and more than 10,100 have died from virus-related complications.