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'This is a good sign': With lower vaccination rates, Lincoln Co. starts to see uptick in people getting shots

Lincoln County sits at 27.1% percent for fully vaccinated folks. These rates are still lower than the state average of 41.7%.

WINFIELD, Mo. — It has one of the lowest vaccination rates in our entire St. Louis region.

Lincoln County sits at 27.1% percent for fully vaccinated folks. These rates are still lower than the state average of 41.7%.

But in the last few weeks, there's been an uptick. More people are getting the shot.

At the County Market in Winfield, the health department popped up its vaccination clinic out front.

"We'll go to them, and so it was kind of a gamble and it seems to be paying off," Brett Siefert, administrator for the department said.

For Zorina Franco, she went to get the J&J shot Friday evening. 

"I’m going on a cruise on September 11th and I needed the one-shot," she said. 

She waited to get the jab, until now.

"I was hesitant, I was nervous," she said.

Franco was worried about the side effects.

She put her nerves aside though, especially after her unvaccinated loved ones got sick.

"My mom and grandma are in the hospital right now with COVID. They were both hesitant and now in the hospital," she said.

It's a harsh reality to what's going on with the Delta variant.

In Lincoln County, for active COVID cases, it's bumped up to 221 cases.

Last week, at this same time, it was at 162.

Right now, only 27% of people in Lincoln County are fully vaccinated.

The only counties with a lower percentage in the St. Louis area are about half the size of Lincoln County, which has about 59,000 residents.

But there's some encouraging news, more folks are getting the shot.

Siefert says an uptick in vaccinations started to happen after the news of the delta variant started to come out and they started to get an increase in calls.

"What we’re finding it seems is that a lot of people are wanting to do some fact checking. Some of it is around the safety and efficacy," he said.

Siefert says this is big.

"Before we might have thought, well, the people who have decided to get vaccinated have done it. Those who have decided not to have made up their mind and that's the end of it. So this is a good sign of us. There were more people than we might have thought, who were on the fence and who are deciding to consider it for just to go ahead and come in and get it," he said.

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