Dr. Joseph Kanter, Louisiana State Health Officer:
Thanks, William. It’s really nice to be with you.
Look, it really does run the gambit across Louisiana. And I will just say, we have done a lot of great work in Louisiana. We are not where we want to be or need to be.
What we’re seeing is different people have yet to choose to get vaccinated for different reasons. You do see a lot of access issues still, particularly amongst marginalized communities. We have a lot of marginalized communities in Louisiana, also a lot of earned mistrust of the system.
And we have a lot of baseline mistrust of government and suspicions. I will tell you, these myths that are out there about the vaccine have become really pervasive and challenging to combat. So, we’re seeing challenges both in urban and rural areas.
We recognize the strategy differs a little bit, depending on who you’re trying to target. And we still have a lot of work ahead of us to do.