Growth in rural Covid-19 vaccination rate has slowed in the past month, even as new infections have skyrocketed

Vaccination rates as of Jan. 13, compared to national average and adjusted to account for vaccinations
not assigned to a county. Map by The Daily Yonder; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Even as new coronavirus infections have skyrocketed over the past month, "The number of rural Americans newly vaccinated for Covid-19 fell to its lowest level since vaccines became broadly available to the public in spring 2021," report Tim Murphy and Tim Marema of The Daily Yonder. "Since mid-December, an additional 500,000 rural residents completed their vaccination regimen for Covid-19. That’s a weekly average of 125,000 newly completed vaccinations. Previously, rural counties logged their smallest number of vaccinations the week before Thanksgiving 2021, when about 144,000 rural people completed their vaccination."

The metropolitan vaccination rate also fell, but not as much. As of Jan. 13, about 48 percent of rural Americans were vaccinated against the coronavirus, compared to about 61% in metro counties. "That makes the rural rate about 22% lower than the urban rate (on a percentage-point basis, the difference is 13.2 points)," Murphy and Marema report. "Currently, the death rate from Covid-19 is about 30% higher in rural counties than in metropolitan counties, according to a Daily Yonder analysis. The rate of new infections is about 25% lower in rural counties compared to metropolitan ones."

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