Our efforts to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the United States are about to get a lot harder, soon.
We recently released our second national survey of U.S. adults, which found that enthusiasm for the COVID-19 vaccine is generally high, with 59% of the population now saying they have already been vaccinated or want to be as soon as a vaccine is made available to them. This proportion of vaccinated and vaccine enthusiastic adults increased from 40% in our first national survey, conducted in early January.
However, an additional analysis we conducted based on survey respondents’ preferred timelines for getting…
After much anticipation, the first COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out worldwide. However, high-income countries have secured most of the supply for themselves, while many low- and middle-income countries are reliant on an initiative called COVAX. Though the first COVAX supplies have arrived, they are only expected to cover 20% of the population in most countries by the end of 2021. As a result, parts of Africa, South America and Asia will likely not be fully vaccinated from the coronavirus until 2023. …
Just after the first anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic, we released a collection of 12 short films that show how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on vulnerable communities across the United States.
The COVID Diaries series brings a human perspective to the data Surgo has been collecting and sharing about community vulnerability during COVID-19. The films were produced by Sareen Hairabedian, an award-winning filmmaker based in Washington, D.C.
Last April, we approached Sareen with an idea: What if we gave up artistic control, and asked people to document their own lives and stories about COVID in the way…
The United States is racing against time to vaccinate a majority of the population, while also dealing with supply- and demand-related barriers that can jeopardize any phase of the vaccine rollout. That’s why today, we launched a new data tool, the U.S. COVID-19 Vaccine Coverage Index (CVAC), to provide health officials and policymakers the precise, county-level data they will need to identify which communities are at risk of low COVID-19 vaccine coverage and why, based on underlying community characteristics.
The new index assesses every county in the United States — geographically and demographically — to identify the barriers to getting…
South Africa is currently grappling with a painful second wave of COVID-19, heightened by the discovery of a highly contagious variant in December. As we attempt to assess the distribution of this burden in South Africa, we must consider how reported COVID-19 statistics — total cases and deaths — likely underestimate the true impact of the virus due to limited continent-wide testing. As a result, we should base our analysis of the pandemic in South Africa on alternative measures, such as excess deaths.
As cases surge and the number of excess deaths peaks, dropping only recently, South Africans face fear…
We encourage those working to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in their communities to take a page from the behavioral science and marketing playbook: Prioritize those Americans who are persuadable (43% of the U.S. population) by dividing them into psychobehavioral segments and focusing on the specific barriers those three segments — The “Watchful,” (20%), The “Cost-Anxious,” (14%), and The “System Distrusters” (9%) — perceive to getting vaccinated.
What’s especially tricky about COVID-19 is that unlike a ‘normal’ vaccination campaign we have extremely limited time that we can’t waste trying to convince people who simply won’t be convinced. …
Simply put, communities across America are not all equally vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic. Certain factors — such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, work environments, and healthcare systems — make some communities more vulnerable to COVID-19’s impact, and in differing ways.
In fact, new Surgo Ventures analysis shows that, since the beginning of the pandemic, people in vulnerable communities have been:
23% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19
32% more likely to have died from COVID-19
29% less likely to be tested for COVID-19
35% more likely to be unemployed
Yet leaders at national, state, and local levels…
A farmer in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, India, had little interest or knowledge of family planning. That is until he started using askNivi, a sexual and reproductive health (SRH) chatbot on WhatsApp. “I started using condoms after reading information on askNivi,” he told our team, “It gave me all the correct information. It changed my point of view.”
In Madhya Pradesh — a rural state in central India with a population of over 75 million people — there is a high unmet need for family planning methods. A 2019 study by Surgo Ventures on SRH in Madhya Pradesh found that 44%…
On January 17, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo issued a sober warning to his country: “Our COVID-19 treatment centres have gone from having zero patients to now being full because of the upsurge in infections. At this current rate … our healthcare infrastructure will be overwhelmed.”
Ghana’s early response to the pandemic was deemed a success, gaining praise for taking decisive actions to stop the spread of the virus, including lockdowns and social-distancing measures. But in light of a new uptick in confirmed cases, policy makers need to carefully introduce response measures to control the spread. …
Since the start of the pandemic, people living in America’s most vulnerable counties are 32% more likely to have died from COVID-19 than those in the least vulnerable counties.
But more closely monitoring and targeting resources to highly vulnerable communities — those most at risk of the negative financial and health impacts of the pandemic — can help save lives.
This is one of the key takeaways from our new report “Vulnerable Communities and COVID-19: The damage done, and the way forward,” which draws on our COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index and our new Precision for COVID Data Explorer, a tool…