LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For Fred Harris, Taylorsville Lake in Spencer County is great for catching fish. After getting vaccinated, he made it his mission to return.
"I hadn't been out here for almost a year because of the pandemic," said Harris. "It's the closest place where there is a major body of water to Louisville."
State data shows Spencer County has one of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Kentucky. Among the more than 19,000 residents, less than 22% of the population has at least one shot, according to the data.
But the North Central District Health Department disputes those numbers.
"I started to really question the numbers when the case counts, the positive cases, started trending down in all of our counties, including Spencer County," said the department's director, Roanya Rice, who oversees vaccination efforts in Spencer, Trimble, Shelby and Henry counties.
She says a zip code in Spencer County was overlooked and was not "being captured in KYIR data."
"That's the database that is used when individuals vaccinate people, they input their data in that system," Rice said.
She believes more than 4,000 people who are vaccinated are unaccounted for in Spencer County.
"That would put them over 7,000 vaccines. That would likely put them in the top 20, where Henry County is," she said. "A lot of Spencer Countians are probably going out of the county and out of our district, possibly into Louisville, to get vaccinated."
Nonetheless, Rice says, at this point vaccine shots boil down to interest and knowledge, not accessibility.
"We continue our educational efforts and try to help people understand the benefits of the vaccine and dispel the myths," she said.
Fred Harris of Louisville.
Harris, enjoying a day at the lake, hopes people reel in a well-informed decision when it comes to COVID vaccinations.
"We have to rebuild this confidence in ourselves, we shouldn't be afraid,” he said.
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