HOUSTON — Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee joined forces with infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez Saturday at a community FEMA vaccination site. The duo is working to combat vaccine hesitancy.
"Everybody has to play. Everyone has to step forward to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
They're working to convince more people to roll up their sleeves for the COVID-19 vaccine. Hesitancy remains a problem nationwide.
15.6 percent of Americans are hesitant to get vaccinated. That number creeps up to 17.2 percent in Texas.
"We have the vaccines, we have the vaccination hubs, the only thing that could derail this is if people refuse to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
And there are growing concerns blood clot issues with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could lead to even greater hesitancy. Hotez said the FDA and CDC will get to the bottom of it soon.
"The longer we pause, the more people will have outstanding concerns," Hotez said. "This is an extremely rare event. We're talking between 1 and 100,000 and 1 and a million."
The spread of highly contagious variants of the virus means more people will have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity. That's up to 80 percent of the population, Hotez said.
"Now the bigger problem is access and making people aware of the opportunities that are out there to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
That's why more open vaccination events like this in underserved communities will be critical. Congresswoman Jackson Lee is urging the public to block out the noise and trust the science.
"The rumors will kill you. Bad information will kill you," Jackson Lee said.
More COVID-19 vaccine sites expected to open on May 1 for an area-wide GOTV, or get out the vaccination effort.