This Is the State With the Worst Vaccination Effort

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 2, 9:43AM EST · Published Jan 31, 8:42AM EST

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This Is the State With the Worst Vaccination Effort — © Brett Carlsen / Getty Images News via Getty Images

As the United States gets hit with mutations of COVID-19 that have entered the country from South Africa, Brazil and the United Kingdom, the race to vaccinate America has become even more essential. Each of these appears to spread more quickly than the strain that has infected Americans for months. And, one of these could be more deadly. The progress of the disease has slowed many places in the U.S. The rise in confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and fatal cases has slowed. However, deaths have reached 443,817 and confirmed cases 26,308,290. The anxiety is that the fatal cases count could still reach 600,000 by the summer.

The rate at which people have been vaccinated state by state varies widely. Across the nation, 49,932,850 doses have been distributed. Of these, 29,577,902 have been given. In total, 7.2% of Americans have been given at least one dose.

Alaska has done the best job based on vaccination rate. In the 49th state, 12.5% of people have been given at least one shot.

At the other end of the spectrum, only 5.1% of the population has gotten at least one shot in Missouri. A total of 835,400 doses have been distributed. A total of 408,441 have been given, for a rate of 49%. This is also below the national average of 59%.

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Missouri continues to be hit hard by the disease. Confirmed cases reached 492,665 yesterday, up by 1,053. Fatal cases sat at 7,175, up by 13.

Missouri has plans to step up vaccination rates. It has opened large vaccine centers in St. Louis and Kansas City. According to STLtoday, “Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, badgered by accusations that the state is not inoculating residents quickly enough against COVID-19, has mobilized the Missouri National Guard and aims to vaccinate at least 18,000 residents on Friday at nine different locations across the state.”

It remains to be seen if these efforts will allow Missouri to “catch up” with other states, or even reach the national average. In the meantime, the people in Missouri have every right to worry that they are worse off as the disease spreads than people in other states.

COVID-19: This is the deadliest county

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.