More than half of eligible Bartholomew County residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, reaching a milestone in the effort to combat a virus that has killed at least 157 residents since April 2020.
Currently, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use starting at age 12, making a total of 70,530 of Bartholomew County’s estimated 83,779 residents eligible for the vaccine, according to the Indiana State Department of Health.
As of Thursday morning, 51% of eligible Bartholomew County residents were fully vaccinated, which is higher than all neighboring counties, including Jackson County, where 42.9% of eligible residents were fully vaccinated, and Jennings County, where just 33.2% were fully vaccinated.
However, most infectious disease have estimated that at least 70% to 80%, perhaps more, of the total population will need to be fully vaccinated to reach herd immunity — the threshold experts believe is needed to stop uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.
Nearly 43% of Bartholomew County’s total population was fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to state records.
Local health officials, for their part, have said they remain hopeful that more people will decide to get vaccinated.
“I’m hoping that is more people see the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, that our rates will increase,” said Dr. Brian Niedbalski, Bartholomew County health officer, in an earlier interview.
Overall, in Columbus and the surrounding area — Bartholomew, Brown, Decatur, Jackson and Jennings Counties — 76,996 out of 167,106 eligible people had received their first shot as of Thursday morning, or about 46%.
At least 75,056 eligible residents of those counties were fully vaccinated as of Thursday, or about 45%.
COVID-19 has killed at least 415 people in Bartholomew, Brown, Decatur, Jackson and Jennings counties — nearly one person, on average, per day since the first confirmed cases of the illness were detected in the community.
However, Bartholomew County and Indiana lag behind much of the rest of the country in the percentage of eligible people getting their first dose.
A total of 61.5% of eligible people in the U.S. had received their first dose as of Thursday morning, compared to 53.2% of eligible Bartholomew County residents and 46.5% of eligible Hoosiers as of Thursday morning.
A total of 242 Bartholomew County residents received their first COVID-19 shots from Sunday to Wednesday, down from 262 during the same period last week and 1,442 from March 14 to 17, according to state records.
A total of 1,692 Bartholomew County residents had received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine as of Thursday morning.
That suggests that the national vaccination rate among eligible people could be poised to pull away from Bartholomew County’s rate in the coming weeks depending on how many of those who have received their first dose return to get their second.
Currently, Indiana has the 12th lowest vaccinate rate out of all 50 states — lower than Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I think we need to keep striving to get those vaccination rates even higher,” Niedbalski said. “It’s great that we are higher than the state rate as a county, but we also need to realize Indiana is only 38th out of all states in total population that is vaccinated.”
