A shrinking percentage of Americans are expressing reluctance to get a Covid-19 vaccine, a positive sign for the efforts to get shots in the arms of enough people to reach herd immunity.
The findings come from the latest release of a large-scale survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and developed in concert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. The most recent survey gauged responses from nearly 80,000 adults between March 3 and March 15.
The survey found about 17% of adults said they would either definitely or probably not get vaccinated, down from 22% in January. The decline was almost entirely due to fewer respondents saying they probably won’t get the shot; the share saying they definitely won’t has remained essentially unchanged in the past two months.
Reluctance to get vaccinated remains highest in the South. But many Southern states have seen a steep decline in hesitancy since the January survey, particularly Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Another finding: vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans has diminished considerably. Black Americans are still the most likely to say they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated. But in January, Black Americans were 13 percentage points more likely than white Americans to say that; as of mid-March, the gap had shrunk to five points.