This State Is Worst at Giving 2 Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 19, 8:10AM EST

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This State Is Worst at Giving 2 Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine — © Fiona Goodall / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The spread of COVID-19 has slowed more rapidly than many scientists and public policy experts expected. A month ago, daily confirmed cases often rose by over 200,000 a day many days. That rate slowed to 70,592 yesterday, as the U.S. total rose to 28,100,922. That is still 25% of the world’s total. Deaths from the disease, which increased by as much as 4,000 a day a month ago, rose 2,253 yesterday to 495,180, or about 20% of the global figure.

The improvement likely has been helped by government policy for social distancing, partial shutdowns of the economy, the fact that so many people already have had the disease and a modest rise in vaccination rates. Vaccines are not completely effective without two doses. Some states have done a much better job of this than others.

Nationwide, 73,377,450 doses have been delivered. Out of those, 57,737,767 shots have been given. Most of those remain first doses. Across the United States, people who have been given at least one shot are 12.0% of the total adult population. The figure for those given two shots is up to 4.9%.

The state with the worst record for giving second doses is Alabama at 3.4%. It also ranks poorly for giving at least one shot at 10.0%. In total, the state has received 1,032,175 doses, and from those, 672,038 shots have been given, which is a rate of 65%. That is well below that national figure of 79%.
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Since the start of the pandemic, Alabama has posted 483,167 confirmed cases and 9,346 fatal ones. Of these, 69,808 cases have been in Jefferson County, home to Birmingham. The county has had 1,308 coronavirus fatalities.

Part of the vaccination problem in the state may be due to outside forces. AL.com reports:

The state’s initial shipment was one tenth of what Alabama had hoped to get from the Trump administration to cover about 300,000 healthcare workers. Alabama’s second Pfizer shipment was reduced at the last minute, leaving public health officials scrambling to reschedule vaccine appointments with healthcare workers on the cusp of the holiday.

An additional twist is that many people in Alabama have refused to get vaccinated at all.

Alabama’s figure lags so far behind the national average that it may never reach that pace. So, even as the rapidity of the spread of COVID-19 drops off, residents will struggle to get their shots without substantial changes.

Click here to read, “COVID-19: These Are the Safest Cities in America.”

Click here to read, “COVID-19: These Are the Most Dangerous Cities in America.”
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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.