Key House oversight panel to hold hearing on COVID-vaccine hesitancy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee – which oversees the nation's health agencies – announced today that the panel will hold a hearing on Wednesday, May 26, at 11:00 a.m. EDT on building Americans' confidence in COVID-19 vaccines to help vaccinate more people across the country.

The hearing comes in the wake of a new CDC study that found vaccine hesitancy remains a "major barrier" to inoculating more Americans in rural areas of the country. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 21 percent of rural residents said they are "definitely not" getting the vaccine.

"We've made tremendous progress in distributing these vaccines across the country," DeGette said, "but now comes the hard part: Getting those shots into the arms of more Americans who still need them. People aren't going to get a vaccine if they don't believe it's safe. That's why, in addition to distributing millions of doses across the country, we need to find ways to combat the misinformation that's circulating out there so that more Americans will be willing to get vaccinated as soon as a shot is available to them."

The lawmakers will hear from some of the nation's top public health officials about steps the federal government can take to combat misinformation about the vaccines and help boost Americans' confidence in their safety.

A new Harris poll released Monday found that a significant number of Americans who say they are unlikely to get the vaccine cited false or undocumented side effects – such as infertility, DNA alteration and even death – as reasons why they don't plan to get the shot.

Earlier this month, the Biden Administration announced that its goal is to have at least one shot into the arms of 70 percent of Americans by July 4.

While millions of doses of vaccine are distributed daily throughout the country, the concern among some health officials is that supply of the potentially life-saving treatment is starting to outweigh demand in some areas of the country.

According to the CDC, the average number of Americans vaccinated each day has been steadily declining in recent weeks – from approximately 3.5 million Americans per day, in early April, to just over 1.5 million per day in recent weeks.

Addressing the need to combat vaccine-hesitancy among a significant portion of the population, the White House announced earlier this year that it plans to spend up to $3 billion to boost Americans' confidence in the vaccines.

How such funding could best be spent, and what specific steps the federal government could take to address misinformation about the vaccines, will be some of the key issues lawmakers plan to discuss during next week's hearing.

More information about the hearing – including the list of witnesses that will be testifying, and a link to watch it live – will be distributed as soon as it's available.