Course: Analysis of Vaccination Rates and New COVID-19 Infections by US County, July-August 2021
CME Credits: 1.00
Released: 2022-02-10
There is substantial variation in the spatial distribution of COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States. We conducted an ecological data visualization analysis to assess the association of the heterogeneous distribution of vaccination coverage with the dynamics of COVID-19 during the third wave of the pandemic in the US.
Institutional review board approval and informed consent were not necessary for this cross-sectional study because all data were deidentified and publicly available (Common Rule 45 CFR §46). This study follows the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology () reporting guideline. COVID-19 data at county level from July 1 to August 31, 2021, were obtained from Johns Hopkins University. Data for cumulative full vaccination rates in the total population at county level were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID data tracker for the contiguous US. We excluded Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia owing to incomplete or unreliable vaccination data. Counties were classified as rural or urban based on the 2013 National Center for Health Statistics classification scheme., Temporal changes in COVID-19 incidence (ie, new cases per 100,000 people in each time interval) were estimated by generating 4 time intervals of equal length (ie, July 1-15, July 16-31, August 1-15, and August 16-31). Cumulative vaccination rates for each time interval were estimated for the last day of each interval. We aggregated vaccination rates in 4 groups: less than 30%, 30% to less than 40%, 40% to 50%, and greater than 50% for visual data analysis. We created bivariate maps and scatterplots illustrating spatial associations between COVID-19 incidence and vaccination rates per county using ArcGIS Pro version 2.8 (Esri).
Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article
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