The COVID-19 Vaccination Rate in This State Surges Above the National Average

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 12, 9:00AM EST

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The COVID-19 Vaccination Rate in This State Surges Above the National Average — © ajr_images / iStock via Getty Images

As the United States is hit with mutations of COVID-19 first noted in Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the race to vaccinate Americans has become even more essential. These variants appear to spread more quickly than the strain that has infected Americans for months, and one of them could be more deadly. The progress of the disease has slowed many places in the United States. The rise in confirmed cases, hospitalizations and fatal cases certainly has slowed. However, coronavirus deaths have reached 479,501 and confirmed cases total 27,649,235, according to the Bing COVID-19 Tracker. The anxiety is that the fatal cases count still could reach 600,000 by the summer.

The rate at which people have been vaccinated varies widely by state. Across the nation, 68,285,575 doses have been distributed. Of these, 46,390,270 have been given. In total, 10% of Americans have received at least one dose.

Kansas is the state that has done the most poorly, as only 8.5% of the population have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The state with by far the best record is Alaska, where 16% of people have been given at least one dose. Oddly, 270,250 have been delivered and only 162,273 given, for a ratio of 60%, which is below the national average of 68%.
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Alaskans have been fortunate in another way. It is the sixth-lowest state based on confirmed cases at 56,252. The fatal case count is 280. Alaska is not divided into counties as is the tradition among most states. Some of the places with the smallest populations are designated “areas” and others “boroughs.” In several of these, confirmed cases number less than 400. In the Lake and Peninsula Borough in the southwest part of the state, there have been only five confirmed cases.

Alaska Public Media, part of PBS, recently reported comments from Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer:

First, she credited Alaska’s communities for working together to get people vaccinated quickly. Second, she said Alaska is getting more doses of the vaccine because of additional allotments for the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

Alaska has high veteran and Native American per capita populations.

Based on these anomalies, Alaska’s vaccination rates are likely to stay in the vanguard among all states.

Click here to read “This Is the City in Every State With the Most COVID-19 Cases.”

Click here to read “This Is the County in Every State With the Most COVID-19 Deaths.”
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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.