Fall COVID shot uptake is an “abysmal” 7%; wastewater testing impaired

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Lindsey Nicholson)

More than a month since US health officials recommended updated COVID-19 vaccines for all Americans, only 7.1 percent of US adults have rolled up their sleeves for the shot and just 2.1 percent of children have been immunized.

The uptake is sluggish at best, and the current rates were dubbed "abysmal" Thursday by one immunization adviser for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC's advisory panel got an update yesterday on the fall campaign to boost protection against COVID-19 ahead of the winter respiratory illness season.

The current uptake is far short of survey data from last month that indicated more than half of American adults planned to get the shots. And survey data presented yesterday to the CDC advisory committee didn't differ dramatically from that. In a National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module that ran from October 8 to 14 that polled 14,715 adults, 24.6 percent said they "definitely will" get vaccinated, and an additional 30.6 percent said they "probably will." That's on top of the 7.1 percent who reported they were already vaccinated. The remaining 37 percent said they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated.