DES MOINES — Iowa is turning down nearly three quarters of the vaccine doses available from the federal government because demand for the shots remains weak. The Department of Public Health and Safety said the state asked the federal government to withhold 71 percent of the 105,300 vaccine doses that were available. This is the second week in a row Iowa asked the federal government to hold back part of its allocation of vaccine doses. Department spokeswoman Sarah Ekstrand said 88 of Iowa’s 99 counties have told the state they don’t need all or part of their weekly vaccine allocations for that week. That’s an increase from the 80 counties that declined vaccine shipments for this week and the 43 counties that declined all or part of their allocations last week.

“As we have shared before, these counties are doing exactly the right thing by only accepting the volume of vaccine that they can confidently administer,” Ekstrand said.