Socially vulnerable populations saw lower rates of COVID-19 vaccination coverage, even as eligibility for the shots expanded, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study released on Friday.
The CDC determined that between Dec. 14 and May 1, inequities in vaccination coverage persisted and grew in counties with more socially vulnerable populations, particularly in rural and “large fringe metropolitan,” or suburban, counties.
The CDC's research confirmed suspicions that counties with vulnerable populations were more likely to have lower vaccination rates compared to other counties, indicating the need for further attention in the vaccination effort.
For the study, the agency used its 2018 social vulnerability index data to distribute the counties into four groups, with the first quartile being the least vulnerable counties and the fourth being the most. The study defined vaccination coverage as the number of adults who had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose out of the total county population.
The data showed that overall, counties considered the least vulnerable had 59.3 percent vaccination coverage, compared to the more vulnerable counties that had 49 percent coverage.
The difference was more visible in large fringe metropolitan counties and rural counties, where there was a 16.7 percentage-point difference and 12.3 percentage-point difference between the most and least vulnerable groups, respectively.
Counties with lower socioeconomic status also had lower vaccination coverage, with a 16.7 percentage-point difference between the groups with the highest and lowest socioeconomic status. ...
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