In her experience, Wussow said ….

In her experience, Wussow said the Hispanic population is generally very receptive to getting vaccinated for other illnesses, so it’s just a matter of working through communication issues.

Ross said the county has worked with the editor of El Noticias, a Spanish-language newspaper in Abbotsford, and Fr. Tim Oudenhouven, a bilingual priest at St. Bernard’s Catholic Church, to get the word out among Hispanic residents.

Since January, the health department has been holding weekly drive-thru vaccination clinics in either Curtiss or Greenwood. Ross said those will now be held every other Thursday instead, in part because of a decrease in demand.

“Normally our appointment block would fill up very fast when we put them out on Friday afternoon (the week before a clinic date),” Ross said. “We’ve seen some decrease in the number of people signing up and an increase in the amount of time it takes to fill up the spots that are available,” he said.

Based on weekly phone calls with area pharmacies and health clinics, private providers are seeing a similar decline in vaccine demand, Wussow said.

“They’re having a hard time filling up their appointment blocks, and their waiting lists are shrinking,” she said The county normally requests between 200 and 400 doses of the vaccine for a two-week period, and the state fills about 66 percent of each request, Kelsey said. More vaccines may become available as demand dips in other parts of the state, she said, but if Clark County’s demand stays low, the health department may request fewer doses per week.

Wussow said people should not assume that the threat of COVID is over at this point, especially with new variants showing up in neighboring Minnesota.

“We are seeing a slow and steady increase in the number of cases, and the positivity rates is actually increasing as well,” she said. “It’s still pretty low, but I think vaccination is maybe giving people a false sense of security.”

Public health officials continue to emphasize other methods of controlling the spread of the virus, such as wearing face masks, social distancing and staying home when sick. Meanwhile, Wussow said her department is doing everything it can to get more people vaccinated, despite some deep-seated reluctance.

“Our numbers are not reflecting our outreach efforts by any means,” she said. “There are factors that are out of our control and working against us.”

To f i n d o u t w h e re a n d wh e n yo u can get a COVID- 19 va c c i n at i o n , g o t o www.clarkcounty.wi.gov and click on “Vaccine Information.”