State health officials are urging more women to encourage their male partners and relatives to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli says that vaccinations among men are lagging in New Jersey.
“I’m going to say women – use your power to convince your male friends to get vaccinated,” Persichilli said on Wednesday.
The commissioner says that women have been lining up in great numbers to get the vaccine.
“We’ve always said in health care, women make the majority of health care decisions for their loves ones – for their fathers and brothers and husbands and partners,” Persichilli said.
She says that 46% of those vaccinated in New Jersey are men, while 49% of the state’s population are male.
“I want to say to the men, nobody is stronger than this virus…so get moving. Roll up your sleeves,” Persichilli said.
New Jersey is doing everything it can to encourage more people to get vaccinated. The governor wants 4.7 million fully vaccinated adults by the end of June. This means that the state must fully vaccinate about 1 million more people in the next seven weeks.
“We want to make sure we're presenting this as accurately as we can. So right now, we're aggressively massaging data. These are not big numbers, one way or the other, but we think there are numbers through federal or other programs that we're not counting,” Gov. Phil Murphy said.
There is vaccine hesitancy in New Jersey, but the governor said that some of the slowing demand for vaccines has to do with issues like vaccine equity, or people thinking the pandemic is receding.
“I think there is still some amount of knowledge gap and lastly the big one, I think are hard to reach people - homebound, homeless, dense communities overwhelmingly in communities of color,” Murphy said.
The governor says 12- to 15-year-olds who get the Pfizer vaccine will not be counted toward the goal of vaccinating 70% of adults.