Nevada’s Vaccination Rate Ramps Up
Bo Brusco | May 9, 2021 (2-minute read)
Nevada’s initial vaccine roll-out was slow going. At the beginning of the year, the state had the second slowest vaccination rate in the country. But thanks to a recent change in eligibility qualifications for the vaccine, Nevada’s roll-out has significantly ramped up.
Image from Unsplash user @spencerbdavis.
In December 2020, the state of Nevada received its first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine. While the vaccine’s arrival gave Nevadans a good dose of optimism, the vaccine roll-out in the state was slow and complicated.
By February 2021, Nevada had the second-lowest vaccination rate in the nation, having only vaccinated 1.2% of the state’s population at the time. According to news3lv.com, the only state that had a lower vaccination rate was South Carolina.
Looking to speed things up, Gov. Steve Sisolak announced that all Nevada residents 16 years of age or older would be eligible to get vaccinated starting April 5th. Now, a little more than a month later, 922,043 Nevadans have been fully vaccinated, accounting for roughly 30% of the population.
Now, in comparison to the vaccination rates of other states, Nevada is doing very well with a higher vaccination rate than states like Georgia, Texas, Idaho, and Indiana, according to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.
Screen shot of the CDC’s Covid Data Tracker from covid.cdc.gov (May 9, 2021).
With the vaccination roll-out in full swing, many Nevadans are beginning to feel hopeful about the future. “I definitely feel optimistic,” says Cade Buer, a Las Vegas local who received the Moderna vaccine. “For me, the pandemic has ended in a sense. I still go through all the precautions,” he explains, “but the worry that was there before isn’t necessarily there anymore, so in that sense, it’s over.”
Moving forward, since May 1st, businesses have been operating at an 80% capacity, as opposed to the previously enforced 50% capacity limit, as 8newsnow.com reported. And on April 20th, Gov. Steve Sisolak signed an Emergency Directive permitting businesses in Nevada to operate at 100% capacity by June 2021.
