How Are Rural Areas Doing with COVID-19 Vaccinations? A Look at 3 Regions

• Despite an increase in COVID-19 vaccine distribution, officials say there are a number of obstacles to administering vaccinations in rural areas.
• Among the issues are a lack of supply and cold storage facilities, as well as sites to administer the shots.
• In addition, many rural residents are hesitant about the vaccine and others need to travel long distances to reach a health center.

The United States is in the midst of a massive vaccination campaign that hasn’t been seen in decades.

More than 1.5 million COVID-19 vaccinations are currently being administered per day.

While the fact that these long-awaited COVID-19 vaccines are now available comes as a relief, there are numerous and significant logistical challenges to overcome before a majority of the country’s 328 million people are immunized.

Dr. Javeed Siddiqui, an infectious disease specialist and chief medical officer at TeleMed2U, outlined some of these challenges.

“In order to effectively deliver vaccine to the United States population, we must have a coordinated effort. This requires coordination among production, transportation, storage, and delivery sites,” he told Healthline.

“To make this issue more complex, maintaining and assuring the cold chain is vital with the currently available vaccines,” he added.

In a country as large, diverse, and spread out as the United States, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work well.

While clinics in a densely populated urban setting might be accessible to millions of people, administering vaccines in the more sparsely populated rural parts of the country is another challenge.

“In the rural setting, there are limited resources to maintain cold chain of the vaccine and for vaccine administration,” said Siddiqui. “In addition, the rural residents may need to travel distances to a centralized vaccine administration site, which may be affected by weather conditions and further complicates care coordination.”

To better understand how different parts of the country are doing with their COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Healthline spoke to experts in three different regions.