Half of rural U.S. still not vaxed for Covid; up 0.8% in Feb.

Vaccination rates as of Feb. 24, 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.

The rural coronavirus vaccination rate grew by 0.8 percentage points over the past month, and was at 49.8% as of Feb. 24, Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. The rural-urban gap grew; the metropolitan rate increased by 1.2 percentage points in the same time frame to 63.7%.

For the second month in a row, the rural rate was higher than the metro rate in Alaska, Arizona, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. "Massachusetts led the nation in rural vaccinations, with 80% of its rural residents fully vaccinated," Murphy and Marema report. "Arizona had the largest growth in rural vaccinations in the last month. The state increased its rural vaccination rate by 4.2 percentage points, reaching 78.4% of the rural population."

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