‘Listen before you talk’: CDC’s Walensky addresses vaccine hesitancy
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CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, had some advice for combating vaccine hesitancy in the United States.
“People always ask me, ‘How do you convince somebody to get vaccinated?’ And the truth is, I think you listen before you talk,” Walensky said Sunday during the opening session of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
“The problem is that takes a long time,” Walensky said. “You have to listen one by one. It’s not a monolith as to why people have not gotten vaccinated yet. That’s a lot of hard work, and that’s the work we have ahead.”
Walensky answered questions about the U.S. and global response to COVID-19 from conference chair Elaine J. Abrams, MD, professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center.
Among the “unprecedented challenges” presented by the pandemic, Walensky noted the inequity of vaccine distribution — 50% of people are vaccinated globally, but just 8% in Africa — and what she characterized as low vaccine uptake in the U.S.
According to Walensky, around 55% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years and 23% of children aged 5 to 11 years have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Among the 213.7 million Americans who have received a full COVID-19 vaccine primary series — which is approximately 64% of the eligible population — Walensky said only around half of people who are eligible have received a recommended booster shot.
She said there has “never been more a divisive time in public health.” Even influenza vaccination rates have been impacted negatively.
“We’re seeing it in all areas of vaccination,” Walensky said
She said the CDC has created multiple resources to show the public that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, including a phone number the public can call to ask questions about them.
Walensky also spoke about new surveillance tools being used to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, including the national wastewater surveillance system. She said the CDC will increase genomic surveillance to better detect new variants.
References:
CDC. COVID data tracker. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total. Accessed Feb. 13, 2022.
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The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States: A discussion with Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Presented at: Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections; Feb. 12-16, 2022 (virtual meeting).
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