Where vaccination rates are low in the U.S., the reasons vary.

• Dec. 27, 2021, 8:47 p.m. ET

In the United States, implicit 204 cardinal radical are afloat vaccinated, but that’s inactive lone 62 percent of the population, overmuch little than successful astir different affluent countries.

At the region level, vaccination rates scope from astir 83 percent successful places similar Montgomery County, Md., a populous country conscionable extracurricular Washington, D.C., to around 15 percent successful agrarian places similar McPherson County successful bluish South Dakota.

As the Omicron variant surges, and experts accidental that vaccinations powerfully support against terrible illness, U.S. nationalist wellness officials are intimately examining ways to scope the least-vaccinated areas. But the roadblocks are not the aforesaid everywhere. Some intelligibly person to bash with politics: Republican-leaning areas person mostly been vaccine laggards. But pockets of the state tin person their ain quirks unrelated to partisanship.

Here is simply a look astatine the challenges faced by 3 counties where, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, vaccination rates are among the lowest successful the nation. (State figures for those counties whitethorn alteration from the C.D.C. information due to the fact that of differences successful methodology, reporting lags and different factors.)

LaGrange County, Ind.

Resistance to vaccines is not caller successful LaGrange County, a agrarian country on Indiana’s borderline with Michigan. Just 22 percent of residents are afloat vaccinated against the coronavirus, and, according to Dr. Tony Pechin, the region wellness officer, lone 15 percent of children successful the region are up-to-date connected modular vaccines by the property of 2.

Dr. Pechin said that helium had encountered the accustomed conspiracy theories astir vaccines, and that adjacent immoderate longtime patients would not heed his proposal to get the shots.

But the astir important factor, helium said, is that astir fractional the county’s 40,000 residents are Amish, a radical that overwhelmingly rejects the vaccines. Among non-Amish residents, helium said, the vaccination complaint is 45 to 48 percent.

Dr. Pechin said that a pharmacy frequented by Amish residents was among the archetypal successful LaGrange County to person doses but had vaccinated conscionable 8 radical successful six months.

The authorities wellness commissioner sent a delegation to conscionable with Amish leaders successful the spring, and the C.D.C. sent different implicit the summer.

“When they were done,” Dr. Pechin said of the envoys, “they called maine and conscionable said, ‘Good luck, Tony.’”

Cameron Parish, La.

When Hurricane Laura made landfall adjacent Cameron Parish successful August 2020, galore residents near damaged homes down and took refuge inland — and person yet to return.

According to the C.D.C., the vaccination complaint is conscionable 17 percent. But Louisiana wellness officials accidental that those figures bash not instrumentality relationship of the colonisation shift.

“Although the numbers look awful, they’re not arsenic atrocious arsenic they appear, due to the fact that of an outflux of radical owed to the earthy disasters,” said Dr. Lacey Cavanaugh, a determination wellness serviceman for the Louisiana Department of Health.

But if the statistic were calculated to bespeak the existent populations of Cameron Parish and others ravaged by caller storms, she said, they would astir apt inactive amusement vaccination rates beneath nationalist averages. Laura destroyed overmuch of the parish’s constricted wellness infrastructure, truthful for months, wellness officials administered vaccines successful a structure successful a infirmary parking lot. And for residents consumed by the enactment of repairing homes and businesses, getting vaccinated fell debased connected the precedence list.

State wellness officials person worked to bring vaccines straight to catastrophe betterment events, and advised residents that getting sick with Covid-19 could marque the roadworthy backmost adjacent harder.

“Once you’re protected” from the virus, Dr. Cavanaugh said, “that’s 1 little happening for you to interest about.”

Winston County, Ala.

A agrarian region with a past of going its ain mode — it refused to articulation Alabama successful seceding from the Union during the Civil War —  faces galore of the challenges that person hampered the state’s vaccine uptake.

Vaccine misinformation is inactive spreading connected societal media, said Dr. Karen Landers, a determination serviceman with the state’s Public Health Department, contempt months of efforts with section leaders, faith-based organizations and pharmacies. The county’s vaccination complaint has stalled astatine astir 21 percent, according to the C.D.C.