How Do You Persuade New Yorkers to Be Vaccinated? Knock on Their Doors.

As demand shrinks, the city is turning to door-to-door outreach to overcome vaccine skepticism. “Nobody I know took the shot,” one man said.

On a recent morning, Tomas Ramos, a community organizer, and two colleagues rode the elevator to the 21st floor of a tower in the Webster Houses, a public-housing project in the Bronx. Working their way down, one floor at a time, they knocked on every door. Sometimes a voice from inside an apartment called out, “I’m not getting vaccinated.” Other times the person behind the door simply went silent after Mr. Ramos, 34, explained he was signing people up for vaccinations. But on the 13th floor, Biency Paulino answered the door, flanked by her mother and her 5-year-old son, Christopher, who giggled at the sight of strangers during such a lonely year.