PROVIDENCE — Just 17 percent of Rhode Island residents have received the most recent COVID-19 vaccine, a number some officials want to see much higher.
“I was hoping we could come out of this with people viewing the COVID vaccines as something you do every year like the flu shot,” state Senator Samuel D. Zurier, a Providence Democrat, said Monday. “I don’t believe we are doing everything we can to achieve that goal.”
Zurier was reacting to a state budget presentation, which included information from the Department of Health that said “the COVID-19 variant will continue to evolve and may lead to occasional surges.”
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Zurier questioned whether state health officials could do more to boost the state’s COVID-19 vaccination rate. And, in his district newsletter, he questioned why the Department of Health has failed to use $20 million in federal money it received through the American Recovery Plan Act to increase that rate.
The Department of Health slide noted that 55 percent of people 65 and older received a flu vaccine this season.
Department of Health spokesman Joseph Wendelken that while the most recent COVID-19 vaccination rate in the entire state population is 18 percent, the rate stands at 49 percent among those 65 and older. The vaccination rate drops to 18 percent for those ages 50 to 64; 10 percent for those 22 to 49; and 5 percent for those 18 to 21.
“After the broad, initial COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, there has been some vaccine fatigue across the country,” Wendelken said.
But he said that in the coming weeks, the Department of Health will be launching a new campaign to educate Rhode Islanders about the importance of COVID-19 vaccination.
“We will be communicating that while the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ is not here, we need to be continually updating our protection,” he said. “As we do in all our campaigns, we will be placing special emphasis on populations harder hit by the health impacts of COVID-19.”
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Wendelken said the $20 million mentioned by Zurier is contingency funding held at the Department of Administration for a surge in cases. “We have the resources we need to effectively do work related to COVID-19 prevention and control,” he said. “For that reason, the administration opted to repurpose this $20 million.”
Zurier acknowledged that federal guidelines allow the state to use that funding for other purposes. “But I don’t think it’s the best use of the money, given the reason it was distributed to the states,” he said. “From my point of view, responding to the impacts of the COVID pandemic and making our health system more resilient is a high priority for this pandemic relief money.”
In addition to age, the Department of Health breaks down vaccination data by race and ethnicity. And according to that data, 20 percent of white Rhode Islanders received the 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccination, compared to 15 percent of Asian residents, 10 percent of Black or African-American residents, and 6 percent of Hispanic or Latino residents.
Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a longtime public health advocate and Latino radio host, launched Rhode Island’s first Spanish-language health website, nuestrasalud.com (“our health”) last year, aiming to increase health literacy and to combat misinformation and disinformation about vaccines and other health matters.
“The authorities are underestimating the level and intensity of misinformation about COVID and the COVID vaccines,” he said. “The attitude has been that the pandemic is over, so we don’t have to invest in more education. In reality, we need it more than ever.”
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Rodriguez said he sees messages spread on social media every day providing incorrect or fake information about COVID-19 vaccines. For example, some suggest that the vaccines can make people magnetized or that vaccines are part of a “world cabal,” he said.
Public health officials must do more to combat the false narratives that are being spread online, Rodriguez said.
“The scientific process, unfortunately, is uncertain, and disinformation is very certain,” he said. “We have to really get ahold of our messaging, and flood the feed (on social media). That is the only way we are going to do it. You cannot sit and argue with people because it gives more credence to the crazies.”
According to the most recent Department of Health data, Rhode Island saw at least seven lab-confirmed COVID-19 deaths in April, down from a recent high of 38 in January.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.