Rural Covid-19 vaccination rate nears 50%; up 1¼% in Jan.

Vaccination rates as of Jan. 27, 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.

About 585,000 rural Americans—1.25 percent of the rural population—completed their coronavirus vaccinations in the second half of January, bringing the rural vaccination rate to 49% as of Jan. 27, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. In contrast, 62.5% of the metropolitan population is fully vaccinated.

"Six states have vaccinated more than two-thirds of their rural population. These are Massachusetts (79.1%), Arizona (74.1%), Connecticut (73.8%), Maine (69.6%), Hawaii (66.7%), and New Hampshire (66.5%)," Murphy and Marema report. And in four states, rural vaccination rates are higher than the metro rate: Alaska, Arizona, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.