Missouri residents are allegedly wearing disguises and getting COVID-19 vaccines in secret in fear of blowback from members of their communities.
Dr Priscilla Frase, who works at Ozarks Healthcare, a hospital in West Plains - 200 miles southwest of St Louis - told ABC News that many patients do not want their family and friends to know they got the shots.
The medical center is now offering to give the vaccines in a private setting to patients who request it.
It comes as Missouri struggles to handle the Indian 'Delta' variant, which is responsible for a recent surge.
Cases have increased in The Show-Me State by 77 percent in the past two weeks, from 1,371 average daily cases on July 12 to 2,427 on July 26.
Dr Priscilla Frase (pictured) told ABC that some Missourians are coming in disguise or in secret to receive COVID-19 vaccines
Only 48 percent of residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine so far, state health department data show.
Frase, who works in the Internal Medicine department at Ozarks, told ABC News that she has seen multiple people in disguise.
'I've had several people come in to get vaccinated who have sort of tried to disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say: "Please, please, please don't let anybody know that I got this vaccine. I don't want my friends to know,"' she said.
In Howell County, where Ozarks is located, the COVID situation is getting worse as the vaccine rate remains low.
Cases in the county - which has a population of around 40,000 - have grown by 500 percent over the past month, from six per day on June 26 to 36 per day on July 26.
Cases in Howell, Missouri, where Ozarks is located, have increased by 500% over the past month
The county also set a new record on Monday, recording 78 new COVID cases, the most ever on a single day.
The county has had trouble getting its residents jabbed as well, with only 10,000 residents - or 25 percent - having received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Howell lies in a region that was among the first to experience a large case surge due to the Delta variant - a highly contagious strain of the virus that originated in
