Study: Time to walk, drive to COVID vaccination sites may have deterred some

The ability to quickly walk or drive to US COVID-19 vaccination sites in the first 2 years of the pandemic ranged widely by jurisdiction and urban or rural area, which may have led to missed opportunities for uptake, according to a new study in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assessed the accessibility of COVID-19 vaccination sites from December 2020 to March 2022. 

The authors noted that the major barriers to vaccine coverage are transportation costs, opportunity costs, and time to travel to vaccination sites, per a previous governmental analysis. "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has provided recommendations to jurisdictions with regard to the planning of convenient COVID-19 vaccination sites… especially those with populations of homebound persons or persons living in remote places," they wrote.