Vaccinations pick up in most rural counties, indicating Delta variant is spurring more, but rural rate still 3/4 of metro rate

Rural/urban vaccination rates as of Aug. 5, compared to the national average and adjusted to account for vaccinations not assigned to specific counties. Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or here for the interactive version.

"More than half of the nation’s rural counties increased their pace of new vaccinations last week, an indication that the rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid-19 is encouraging unvaccinated Americans to take action," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "Each of the 47 states in the union with rural counties had larger numbers of rural vaccinations last week than two weeks ago."

Between July 30 and Aug. 5, an additional 260,695 rural Americans completed their vaccinations, 74 percent more than the 150,205 who completed their vaccinations the week before. The nationwide rural vaccination rate climbed to 36.7% as of Aug. 5, up 0.5 percentage points from the week before. "Despite the gains, the rural vaccination rate remains much lower than the metropolitan rate," Murphy and Marema note. The metro rate rose 0.7 points, to 48% of the metro population.

Click here for an interactive county-level map, regional analysis and charts from the Yonder.