Northern Indiana Amish see hurdles getting COVID-19 vaccines

ELKHART, Ind. (AP) — The local Amish population faces barriers to getting vaccinated for COVID-19 that other groups do not, as Hoosiers generally need to make vaccination appointments online or by phone and clinics are located in towns and cities.

About 26,000 Amish residents live in Elkhart and LaGrange counties, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. In Elkhart County, a direct effort to get shots to the Amish has yet to launch, according to county Health Officer Dr. Bethany Wait.

First, she said, the county and state are reaching out with information.

“We are at the point where they are not ready to choose vaccines. I think we are at the point where they want more information about vaccines. At least that’s the feedback that we’re getting,” she said.

Wait believes the Elkhart County Health Department, not the state, should be in charge of getting doses to the Amish community when that time comes.

“We’re going to have to do that. I think we have the closest relationship, in general, with the Amish population,” she said.

But for now – even if members of the Amish community wish to get vaccinated it isn’t easy, according to Wait.

“I don’t think you can target the Amish population if you’re requiring online registration,” she said.

Sociologist Cory Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State University and editor of the Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies, said the Amish have ways of getting around the barriers, but the fact that barriers exist is likely to mean fewer get vaccinated.

“Even though the Amish and the conservative Mennonites are going to have restrictions of one nature or another on the internet and telephone access, they’ve lived with these restrictions so...