ANALYSIS: More data on coronarvirus infections dropping in states with more vaccinations, rising in states with low vaccination rates

Coronavirus infections dropping where people are vaccinated, rising where they are not, Post analysis finds As recently as June 4, states with higher vaccination rates did not have significantly lower case rates than states where few people were vaccinated. Washington Post

States with higher vaccination rates now have markedly fewer coronavirus cases, as infections are dropping in places where most residents have been immunized and are rising in many places people have not, a Washington Post analysis has found.

States with lower vaccination also have significantly higher hospitalization rates, The Post found. Poorly vaccinated communities have not been reporting catastrophic conditions. Instead, they are usually seeing new infections holding steady or increasing without overwhelming local hospitals.

As recently as 10 days ago, vaccination rates did not predict a difference in coronavirus cases, but immunization rates have diverged, and case counts in the highly vaccinated states are dropping quickly.

Vaccination is not always even within each state, and The Post found the connection between vaccine shots and coronavirus cases at the local level comparing more than 100 counties with low vaccination rates (fewer than 20 percent of residents vaccinated) and more than 700 with high vaccination rates (at least 40 percent vaccinated).

Counties with high vaccination had low coronavirus rates that are going down. In counties where few people are vaccinated, not only are there higher case rates, but the number of cases there also is growing.

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But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.

Nationally, 43 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging under 16,000 new infections a day — levels not seen since the early days of stay-at-home orders in March 2020. Ten states, concentrated in the Deep South and rural West, report fewer than 35 percent of residents are fully immunized.

An uptick in infections in numerous states offers a preview of summer surges that could take hold “if the unvaccinated continue to behave as though they’re vaccinated,” said Michael Saag, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For now, risk is unevenly distributed, concentrated in communities where shots are sparse, he said. ...