Rural coronavirus vaccinations fall for second straight week

Vaccination rates as of Oct. 28, compared to 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 click here for the interactive version.

Rural coronavirus vaccinations were down slightly last week, for the second week in a row. From Oct. 22 to 28, "Rural counties reported about 207,000 people completed their vaccination regimen last week," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "That’s down about 10 percent from the previous week’s tally of 229,000. The pace of new rural vaccinations is less than half the rate it was in mid-September, when rural counties reported nearly 450,000 newly completed vaccinations. The rural vaccination rate grew by 0.4 percentage points last week and now stands at 44.1% of the total rural population of about 46 million."

Meanwhile, metropolitan counties saw about 1,371,000 newly completed vaccinations, a 4% increase from the week before that brings the overall metro rate to 56%. That's 11.9 percentage points higher than the rural vaccination rate, Murphy and Marema report.

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