It's Thursday April. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. We might be hitting another snag in the vaccine rollout, too much vaccine. Some states are starting to see the supply of doses exceed the demand. The pace of vaccinations has flattened out at about three million per day. The states are starting to see too many open vaccine appointments. Rachel Rubin, health reporter at Politico, joins us for how the strategy
is changing to get more people vaccinated. Thanks for joining us, Rachel, Hi, thanks for happy all right, So we're starting to run into another problem when it comes to vaccines now. You know, after a lot of states have really expanded their tears, everybody's more eligible to go and get those vaccines. We're starting to run in the problem where states are having too many vaccine doses. The demand is not as high as the supply that we once had at the beginning.
It's kind of the inverse of the whole thing now and states are coming up with different ways of how to get the word out that we still have the vaccines. It's important to get it done and you should go get it. So, Rachel, tell us a little bit about what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly what you said. The supply of COVID vaccines is now exceeding demand, both in rural
areas and big cities. And what was interesting was when we were doing some reporting this week, we were talking to state and local officials who all expected this to happen,
but it had actually happened earlier. In the quest of vaccinates, we have been billion Americans, over three billion Americans, and they thought so it is kind of a daring twist after months of seeing kind of appointment websites crash and seen and hearing anados of people waiting around at pharmacy counter is hoping to get rest over doses, and now state, local, and federal officials are really trying to make a twist
and meet people where they are. Yeah, and I think that's really important, is you know, some of these pop up clinics and whatnot so they can get it. And you know, you've got to make it easier for people to want to get that vaccine. And you know, we've spoken a lot of on the podcast about vaccine hesitancy for a number of reasons. Some of it is political some people just don't trust the government. Other people don't trust the you know, the pace of the vaccines were made,
but by and large, they've been very effective. They are safe, and more people are getting it. I know a lot of people were saying, well, I want to wait till more people get it. We've reached that point now, you know what I mean. So it's like, uh, it's hard to figure out that new tactics. So this is exactly what a lot of these states are are working towards figuring out what that new campaign is and how to
do it. So what are some of the states doing exactly you mentioned taking the vaccines to them, But what else are we seeing out there? It's a good point. I mean, there are those people who are hesitant to get a vaccine, but there are also millions of Americans without the ability or kind of the motivation to get vaccinated.
So some of the things that my colleague Goldberg and I heard about is in a peninsula in Alaska, emergency medical Service personnel UM bringing the vaccine to kind of any house or business with three or more people who wants it. In New Orleans, we heard of the city partnering with bar to do shots for shots promotion, so giving out a different kind of shot after you get
the vaccine. We talked the officials in North Dakota who were working on piloting pop up clinics at Walmart, and we also heard more in Louisiana, and this was a message that we heard from other local and state officials. Was working on smaller scale events in neighborhoods, churches, and community centers and working with kind of trusted community members who can help spread the word such as physicians, providers,
primary care doctors, etcetera. I'm wondering if even as part of the evolving strategy you need a roll in outreach to those people that have already had COVID and you know, maybe don't at the vaccine because they've already had it, they already had the antibodies. You have to kind of figure out who are the people that are no longer getting the vaccines and kind of target them. So it's
a difficult challenge for sure. And what have a lot of these states said when it comes at least to the part of the Biden administration and figuring that out. I saw from some of your reporting, you know, they said you had a plan before. Now that the demand is dropping, you need to figure out that new plan.
You need to target these new people in different ways. Governors, centers, public health experts that we talked to said that the White Health can't rely on the same strategy it used when a supply was constrained, going back to trying to meet people where they are having trusted messengers and fine administrations so that they have put three billion dollars towards investing in vaccine confidence and launch a new volunteer core.
My colleague San Goldberg talked to, for example, tender John Tester, a Democrat from Montana, who said that, like testing, members of the community play a big role here. He also added that seem like the CDC to more explicitly link vaccines to return to normal life, and the BIDO administration school has been to return closer to normalcy by July four. Well, we'll see what we can do. The pace of vaccinations
has flattened at about three million a day. I mean, we need to keep those numbers up and get more people vaccinated so that we can get to that HERD immunity and just like you said, open back up, get back to normal. So we'll see if we can get there. Rachel Rubin, healthy reporter at Politico, Thank you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's
big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow us in my heart radio or wherever you get your podcast