New survey provides info on vaccine hesitancy in the Valley

By Conor Wilson • July 16, 2021 1:30 am
Cars lined up at Snoqualmie Valley Hospital on March 26 as people awaited their first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine as part of the hospital’s first mass vaccination event. Contributed by Snoqualmie Valley Hospital
Cars lined up at Snoqualmie Valley Hospital on March 26 as people awaited their first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine as part of the hospital’s first mass vaccination event. Contributed by Snoqualmie Valley Hospital

New data on vaccine hesitancy collected between June 24 and July 1 shows that the Snoqualmie Valley has similar rates of hesitancy compared to the King County average.

The survey data was collected by the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University. The group collected about 50,000 survey responses per day using Facebook. The survey was designed to provide information to forecast how COVID-19 may be spreading.

From this data, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, used statistical models to estimate vaccine hesitancy in more than 32,000 zip codes. The data has been published weekly since January.

“It is more dangerous now to be unvaccinated than it was a year ago because the variants are both more transmissible and more deadly,” IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray said. “We hope that this tool will provide valuable guidance to health leaders as they work to reach those who are not yet vaccinated.”

Each survey respondent was asked: “If a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 were offered to you today, would you choose to get vaccinated?”

If the survey respondent answered without a definitive yes, they were considered hesitant to the vaccine. Hesitant responses include “yes, probably,” ‘no, probably not,” and “no, definitely not.”

Fall City (zip code 98024) had the highest percentage of hesitant residents in the Valley, at 8.91%. Snoqualmie (98065) and North Bend (98045) had hesitancy rates of 6.82% and 8.71%, respectively. Carnation (98104) had the lowest rate at 4.58%.

King County had the lowest percentage of hesitant residents, at 7.78%, of any county in Washington. Auburn (98002) had the highest rate of hesitancy of all King County cities, at 21.27%. Preston had the lowest at 0.38%.

Across all zip codes nationwide, hesitancy is at 19%, with 6,000 counties having hesitancy above 30%. According to the CDC, 67.7% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one shot of the vaccine.

The average number of COVID-19 cases nationwide doubled from 11,300 to 23,600 between June 24 and July 12, according to data from John Hopkins University, the first rise in cases the U.S. has seen in months.