COLUMBUS, Ohio — This weekend is the deadline for President Biden's goal of having 70% of eligible Americans vaccinated.
Franklin County as a whole will not reach this goal, but some parts of the county will.
“Those that wanted it, they rushed out and got it. Now we're at the point where we're having to do a little more differentiation and education for folks who are still uncertain about whether they want to get the vaccine,” said Carla Williams-Scott, Director for the Department of Neighborhoods.
If you look at the county’s breakdown by zip code, a few zip codes have reached the milestone.
This map of vaccinations within Franklin County shows the vaccination rate. The blue signifies a vaccination rate above 50%, the yellow signifies the rate is below.
Dr. Mysheika Roberts, the Health Commissioner for the City of Columbus, says there’s a variety of reasons some are not getting vaccinated.
“I think the vaccine hesitancy that we talked about for some time, it still exists and we've got some more work to do in our minority communities to get them to agree to take the vaccine,” said Dr. Roberts.
Sean Bates lives in the 43223 zip code, which has a vaccination rate of about 32%. He has a variety of reasons for not getting the vaccine, but when asked if there's someone who can answer any questions he might have, he said no.
“No one in particular that can relate to me or my demographic. My demographic has a lot of the same questions and a lot of the same reasons to be apprehensive, so if we all had someone that we felt comfortable with, then maybe we might be more inclined,” Bates said.
Bridging that gap, the Health Commissioner says is the next step.