Private Story
COVID-19 Vaccine Access
Covid-19 Vaccine Access: How Rural Transit Agencies Are Helping Get the Shots in Arms
Commissioned by The Wall Street Journal
On a recent overcast morning, Lou Ann Share waited for the bus in the kitchen of her family’s yellow-sided house as her daughter made waffles for her 8-year-old twins.
Ms. Share, a 66-year-old retired florist, had secured a Covid-19 vaccination appointment at a hospital 30 minutes from her home in this rural community in central Pennsylvania. But she couldn’t drive herself because of chronic pain from an accident 25 years ago, and nobody else in the family could take her.
“If it wasn’t for Rabbit, I wouldn’t be able to do this,” she said, referring to Rabbittransit, a local transportation agency that is giving free rides to vaccination sites across 11 counties.
For Ms. Share and others like her, rural transit agencies are providing more than rides. They are the crucial link to long-awaited protection from the deadly coronavirus.