Covid vaccine boosters in the U.S.: For nearly a month, the CDC's vaccine tracker has shown that virtually everyone 65 and older in the U.S. is vaccinated.
Accuracy issues raise red flags because the data help plan and direct resources in the country’s response to the pandemic.
Knowing with accuracy what proportion of the population has rolled up sleeves for Covid shots is vital to public health efforts, said Dr. Howard Forman, a professor of public health at Yale University School of Medicine. Getting an accurate figure on the proportion of residents who have been vaccinated is difficult for several reasons. The CDC and states may be using different population estimates. State data may not account for residents who get vaccinated in states other than where they live or in clinics in federal facilities, such as prisons, or those managed by the Veterans Health Administration or the Indian Health Service.
Liz Hamel, the vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF, agrees that it’s highly unlikely that 99.9 percent of seniors have been vaccinated. She said the differences between CDC vaccination rates and those found in KFF and other polls are significant. “The truth may be somewhere in between,” she said.