Friday, August 13, 2021

Pandemic roundup: New rural infections up 40% last week

New coronavirus infections, in ranges by county, Aug. 1-7
Daily Yonder map; click the map to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

New rural coronavirus infections "jumped more than 40% last week, rising to 99,136 from about 70,000 the week before. In the past month, the weekly number of new infections in rural counties has grown sevenfold -- the highest single-month increase in rural America since the start of the pandemic," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. Rural Covid-19 deaths also began to accelerate last week. Click here for more charts, regional analysis, and an interactive county-level map.

Neighbors' deaths from Covid-19 have a rural Arkansas town reassessing vaccination. Residents are still deeply skeptical, but community leaders are trying to persuade them. Read more here.

You may have noticed that Daily Yonder infection maps don't have data from Nebraska. That's because the state, citing privacy concerns, is no longer releasing to the public infection data from counties with fewer than 20,000 people—about 80% of the state's 93 counties. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department still publish county-level data, but those are only updated weekly and aren't as extensive as what many local health departments had been reporting. Rural counties have lower vaccination rates and are more likely to see "explosive outbreaks" of Covid-19, said one expert. Without state-released data, it's more difficult for news media and policymakers, as well as the general public, to assess how bad the pandemic is. Read more here.

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