This County Has The Lowest Vaccination Rate In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 3, 9:30AM EDT

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This County Has The Lowest Vaccination Rate In America — © BOB WESTON / iStock via Getty Images

Vaccination has become the key to the fight against COVID-19 in America. As more and more people get shots, the use of social distancing and mask-wearing has dropped. However, as a single weapon, it can only be so effective, because many Americans have not received vaccine shots, and have even rejected them in some cases.

While the U.S. as a whole has a vaccination rate of 58% for people 18 years of age or older, many states have figures well below that, and some counties have frighteningly low rates. This risks a tremendous surge in certain parts of the country.

Unfortunately, it has been easy for some Americans to forget or ignore the U.S. numbers. Just over 610,000 people have died from COVID-19. That is just above 15% of the global total. Confirmed cases in the U.S. reached 33.8 million as of yesterday. That is just over 18% of the global figure. While the worst spread of the disease has moved to India, South America, and parts of Africa, American remains vulnerable.

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The latest threat to America is the Delta variant of the disease, which spreads faster than the earlier versions of COVID-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently commented: “The Delta variant has the capability of spreading much more efficiently from person to person. It also can cause more severe disease.”

The state with the lowest vaccination rate is Mississippi where 38.3% of people 18 years old or older are fully vaccinated. Other states with very low rates include Wyoming, Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, Idaho, and Arkansas. As the Delta variant reaches these states epidemiologists are convinced there will be a spike in confirmed cases and deaths.

Astonishingly, one American county has a vaccination that is barely above 10% for adults 18 years old or older. The exact rate in Miller County, Arkansas is 10.8%. According to the U.S. Census, Miller County has a population of 43,257. Just over 68% of the county is White. Another 25% is Black. The county is relatively poor. The median household income is $43,371, more than $20,000 below the national average. The poverty rate, at 14.1%, is above the national figure.

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Click here to read These Are The Cities In Every State With The Most COVID-19 Cases

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.