WAKE FOREST — North Carolina may be first in flight, but it’s in the bottom half of states for COVID-19 vaccination.

Although Wake County’s vaccination rate is well above the state average, North Carolina ranks 31st among the 50 states in percentage of residents who received the vaccine.

“About 78% of Wake County residents are vaccinated, but only 62% are vaccinated in the state,” Aanya Sachdeva said.

Sachdeva, a Wake Forest resident who attends Cary Academy as a senior, started Project Give It a Shot in June 2021 to give vaccine awareness a boost after volunteering at a Youngsville pharmacy.

“In my time there, I started noticing the number of vaccines started to decrease,” Sachdeva said. “They started doing about 100 doses a day, and then when I was there, it dropped to about five or six. In the state, the vaccination rate started to get stifled, staying around 45% and not changing much.”

The teen wants to move the proverbial needle by persuading more people to roll up their sleeves.

“I realized there are a lot of people from the rural areas of North Carolina who haven’t gotten vaccinated because of either a lack of information or (who) just refused,” she said. “My goal then was to bring access to everyone who wanted to be vaccinated.”

Sachdeva said Project Give It a Shot has vaccinated more than 1,000 people, and she can’t claim sole credit for the effort’s success.

“The plan was to go to charity clinics in areas focused on Medicaid and underserved populations, like the NCIAP’s People’s Medical Care and Open Door Clinic,” Sachdeva said. “There were volunteers who would help others learn about the vaccine, share flyers and speak in Spanish as well as English — the language barrier was an issue in some cases. We would also give Uber rides if transportation was an issue. We just wanted to make people feel comfortable.”

Organizers plan to offer educational clinics next week in both Louisburg and Henderson next week, providing additional insight.

Anjali Gupta wants to continue helping Sachdeva in her endeavors. Gupta, an N.C. State University graduate planning to start medical school in the summer, said volunteers are overcoming challenges. 

“I saw the barriers presented with health inequities,” Gupta said. “You had patients who didn’t have access to transportation, education about the vaccine or struggled with creating an email. I wanted to be involved to help them, and Aanya is doing a tremendous job bridging the gap.”

Project Give It A Shot set up shop Monday at Family First Primary Care in Wake Forest to educate patients about the vaccine.

“They’ve come to help our patients understand the vaccine, and I think this project is going to be great in the rural areas where there’s less outreach,” Dr. Grace Tang said. “It sounds like a great plan, and I definitely think that education is the way to help people understand vaccines better — there’s a lot of misinformation about the vaccine, like the amount of side effects, and it’s what we need. What we’ve experienced here is very few of our patients have experienced side effects from the vaccine.”

To learn more about Project Give It a Shot, set up a time for a vaccination or become a volunteer, visit www.projectgiveitashot.com.