Rural vaccine weekly doses up 20%; fastest climb in 3 mos.

Vaccination rates as of Sept. 16 compared to the national average, adjusted to account for vaccinations not assigned to specific counties. Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

About 362,000 rural Americans completed their coronavirus vaccinations during the week of Sept. 10-16. "That’s an increase of about 20% over two weeks ago and the largest number of new vaccinations recorded in rural counties since the third week of June. In metropolitan counties, the number of newly completed vaccinations climbed by about 9% compared to two weeks ago," Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder. "The rural vaccination rate reached 40.4% of the total rural population – an increase of 0.8 percentage points from two weeks ago. The metropolitan rate also grew by 0.8 percentage points to 52.2%. The metropolitan completed vaccination rate remained steady at 11.8 points higher than the rural rate."

Mississippi had the highest rate of new rural vaccinations last week, growing by 1.4 percentage points to 39.4% of the rural population, Marema reports.

Meanwhile, the rural Covid death rate is twice as high as the metro county rate, which is significant because the rural and urban death rates remained similar until early August. "Since then, the weekly death rate in rural areas has grown six-fold. During the same period, the metropolitan weekly death rate increased three-fold," Marema and Tim Murphy report.

Click here for more charts, maps and regional analysis from the Yonder, including an interactive map.