Coronavirus in rural America (Part CXLI): Five phase-three hotspots are mostly rural, with low vaccination rates

In this CNN story yesterday Elizbeth Cohen and John Bonfield report under the headline, "Five undervaccinated clusters put the entire United States at risk."  One of those under-vaccinated regions is the Missouri-Arkansas Ozarks. That's where I grew up, so it caught my attention.  Here's a salient quote:

The five clusters are largely in parts of eight states, starting in the east in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to southern Missouri. The clusters also include parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and are made up of mostly smaller counties but also cities such as Montgomery, Alabama; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Amarillo, Texas.

And here's a map depicting the five clusters:

Information about the data collections challenges of that study is here:

The county data is not without its flaws. When someone gets a shot, their home county is supposed to be noted in state records, but the system doesn't always work perfectly. In the Georgetown analysis, at least 90% of all vaccinations were recorded with the person's home county, Bansal said.

In some cases, the Georgetown data differs from CDC data because Bansal and her team were able to obtain additional data directly from state health departments.

Then, this morning, NPR reported on the region's new COVID challenges.  NPR singled out two counties, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, population 31,848, and Newton County, Missouri, population 58,118, where cases are spiking.  Those two counties are nearly contiguous and are in the greater Ozarks region mentioned above.  In both counties, the vaccination rate is low, just 16% in Ottawa County, OK and 22% in Newton County, MO.  This story features a data table showing hot spot counties.  Interestingly, they include the county where I was born, Boone County, Arkansas, and the county where I live now, Sacramento County, California.  The rate per 100,000 is 44 in Boone County, Arkansas, while it is less than a fifth that--just 8 per 100K, in Sacramento County, California. 

As a related matter, this Tweet about Stone County, Arkansas came across my timeline yesterday, suggesting that a single COVID case on June 1 had turned into 70 this past week.  The vaccination rate is 29%.

The source of the Tweet, Skip Rutherford, recently stepped down as head of the Clinton School of Public Policy at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.  

Stone County is in north central Arkansas, part of the region noted above. 

Meanwhile, in Baxter County, Arkansas, also along the Missouri state line in north central Arkansas, the Ranger Bass Boats manufacturing facility shut down after a COVID outbreak among workers.  

Postscript:  The New York Times reported out of Springfield, Missouri on July 10, where Cox Medical Center has been overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.  Cox is the closest major hospital to where I grew up.  My father had several heart surgeries there.