COVID-19: The State With The Biggest Vaccination Problem

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 13, 7:19AM EST

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COVID-19: The State With The Biggest Vaccination Problem — © miodrag ignjatovic / iStock 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 484,930 and confirmed cases 27,746,122. 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, 69,014,725 doses have been distributed. Of these, 48,410,558 have been given. In total, 11% of Americans have been given at least one dose.

There is an extremely broad spread among the states based on the percentage of their populations that have been given at least one dose. The most successful is Alaska. It has received 271,350 doses and 167,436 have been given. Of its population, 16% have been given at least one dose. Some of the success has been attributed to its military and Native American populations. There are special programs in place to vaccinate these two groups.

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At the other end of the spectrum, only 8.7% of Rhode Island’s population has been given at least one does. The state has received 211,850 doses of which 131,913 have been given.

Rhode Island was a hot spot for the disease for several weeks. It is still near the top of the spread rate of the disease among all states with a case rate per 100,000 of 40. Only six states have higher numbers.

Rhode Island has had 120,821 confirmed cases and 2,290 fatal ones.

According to television station WPRI, data from Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center show:

Rhode Island currently ranks in the bottom 10 states nationwide for coronavirus deaths per capita; vaccine doses administered; use of available doses; and speed of getting shots into arms. The school calculated each state’s per-capita metrics based on its adult population, excluding those under 18.

Arresting the spread of disease relies on several things, which include rules about masks, social distancing, and limited public gatherings. Vaccination rates have joined that list. Based on the numbers, Rhode Island is in trouble.

Click here to read This Is How Many People Have Died of COVID-19 in Every State

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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.