A 4-hour round trip for a COVID vaccine? Missouri needs doses where more people live
If you were a Missourian looking for a dose of COVID-19 vaccine last Wednesday, you could not have done better than visit Leopold, a small town of several dozen folks living near the Bootheel.
The state recently made 2,000 doses of vaccine available for a mass vaccination event in Leopold. But so few eligible patients showed up, a social media call went out offering an inoculation to anyone who wanted it.
“No appointment necessary,” a reporter posted. At one point, half the community’s supply was up for grabs.
For a state still near the bottom of national rankings for COVID-19 vaccination rates, it was clearly an embarrassment. It was also, Gov. Mike Parson insisted, an isolated problem.
“We try our best to make sure those things are not happening,” Parson said Thursday. “They probably shouldn’t have put that out there the way they did.”
Even if the state and governor get a pass for this incident, however, there remain troubling concerns that vaccine distribution in Missouri remains uneven and unfair.
Rural areas, many believe, are getting more vaccine than the cities. On Friday, people lined up in their cars for 90 minutes at a mass vaccination event in Clinton, according to reports. And many of the license plates looked to be from Kansas City, more than 75 miles away.
In an interview Wednesday for “4Star Politics,” The Star’s digital production with Fox 4 Kansas City, Parson rejected the claim that cities are being slighted. “There is no one area getting more vaccine than the other,” he said.
“Kansas City makes up 23% of the population, they’re going to be somewhere between 20% and 23% in that region to get that (vaccine),” the governor said.
Read those words closely. The governor was referring to vaccines available in the greater Kansas City region, not just Kansas City, Missouri. The region consists of 13 counties, and includes cities such as Sedalia, Warrensburg and yes, Clinton.
All of those cities have hosted mass vaccine events. Except for one clinic north of the river, Kansas City has not.
Some urban residents have decided to travel hundreds of miles to mass vaccinations in those smaller communities. The governor said 20% of people vaccinated at a recent Cape Girardeau event actually traveled from the St. Louis area, some two hours away.
This seems silly. If one-fifth of the doses in a rural community are going into the arms of urban commuters, doesn’t it make infinitely more sense to move those doses to the city — so people who lack the ability or the will to travel can get vaccinated?
“It is tough for folks to say, well, your best opportunity is this very long drive. Some folks have been able to do it, but a lot of people haven’t,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told Fox 4.
“I don’t know if there’s a perfect system,” Parson told us.
“If people from Kansas City go to Clinton, or wherever they might go, and they can get the vaccine and they sign up for it and they’re Missouri residents … at some point people have got to take responsibility, do you stay in that area or not?” he said.
This seems to be the approach that frustrates Missourians the most. People should not have to spend hours scouring websites, dealing with hospitals and pharmacies, looking for available vaccines, sometimes driving hours to get a shot.
Not everyone can do that. No one should have to.
That’s why we’ve recommended well-publicized, well-run mass vaccination events in Kansas City and other urban communities. It should be easier for people to drive through a parking lot and get a vaccine than it is today.
Gov. Parson and others have said demand for the lifesaving shots will subside once more doses become available, which is happening. That’s the good news.
But the state should rededicate itself to making sure available vaccine doses are used wisely and made easily available. Every Missourian should enjoy the same access to inoculation as the lucky folks in Leopold.
This story was originally published February 28, 2021 at 11:39 AM.