Only around 4% of eligible Kansas Citians have gotten the new booster shot, data shows

Kansas City is more than a month into the bivalent booster shot rollout, and uptake of the new and improved vaccine designed to fight the omicron variants has been slow. While vaccination numbers are difficult to track, local health departments estimate that they’ve administered these new boosters to around 62,500 residents in the metro area.

“There has been a huge information gap. Not a lot of people know about it,” said Dr. Kevin O’Rourke, the director of operations for the emergency department at University Health. “We’re not having vaccine drives where cars are lining up at the stadium to get their vaccines. All that big publicity, big campaigns, has definitely wound down.”

O’Rourke said that this lack of messaging, coupled with pandemic weariness more than two and a half years after COVID-19 first emerged, has led to a sluggish reception to the new booster.

Here’s where to find a bivalent booster shot around the metro.

How many bivalent boosters has my county administered?

Here’s our best estimate at how many bivalent boosters have been administered in each county and city that make up the greater Kansas City area, according to local health departments and the Mid-America Regional Council:

Kansas City: 15,000

Jackson: 4,853*

Clay: 1,344*

Platte: 732*

Independence: 3,018

Johnson: 32,292

Wyandotte: 5,225

County and city health departments shared most of the numbers above directly with The Star. The numbers with asterisks (*) above were gathered from Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) data when health departments didn’t share a number of total bivalent boosters administered.

These numbers for Jackson, Clay and Platte counties only represent people who got their first booster shot in the time since September 12, roughly when the bivalent boosters replaced the original ones. They don’t include people who were already boosted when they got the new shot, meaning they are likely an undercount of the true total.

“A lot of people have had COVID in the last few months, so people feel less of a need to get boosted,” O’Rourke told The Star.

What portion of eligible people have gotten a bivalent booster?

Overall, an estimated 4% of eligible residents in the Kansas City area have received a bivalent booster shot. The local county with the highest rate of bivalent booster shots is Johnson County with 6.7%. Here’s how it breaks down by county:

Kansas City: 5%

Jackson: 1.16%*

Clay: 0.96%*

Platte: 1.19%*

Independence: 5.53%

Johnson: 6.7%

Wyandotte: 5.24%

In order to calculate these percentages, we divided the number of bivalent boosters administered in each county by the total number of people eligible to get one.

The minimum requirement for getting a bivalent booster shot is that you must be over the age of 5 and have already received a full course of vaccination. MARC data shows this number for each county in the metro. We used other local data sources to find the fully vaccinated totals for Kansas City and Independence.

With the cold winter months approaching and flu season nearly upon us, O’Rourke recommended getting your booster alongside your flu shot to save a trip to the pharmacy and ensure you’re protected against these viruses.

“Some people try to wait until cases are going up, but then it’s probably too late,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t want a severe case of covid should definitely be getting vaccinated.”

Do you have more questions about staying safe from COVID-19 in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.