Abstract
Equitable vaccination distribution is a priority for outcompeting the transmission of COVID-19. Here, the impact of demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors on county-level vaccination rates and COVID-19 incidence changes is assessed. In particular, using data from 3142 US counties with over 328 million individuals, correlations were computed between cumulative vaccination rate and change in COVID-19 incidence from 1 December 2020 to 6 June 2021, with 44 different demographic, environmental, and socioeconomic factors. This correlation analysis was also performed using multivariate linear regression to adjust for age as a potential confounding variable. These correlation analyses demonstrated that counties with high levels of uninsured individuals have significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates (Spearman correlation: −0.460, p-value: <0.001). In addition, severe housing problems and high housing costs were strongly correlated with increased COVID-19 incidence (Spearman correlations: 0.335, 0.314, p-values: <0.001, <0.001). This study shows that socioeconomic factors are strongly correlated to both COVID-19 vaccination rates and incidence rates, underscoring the need to improve COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in marginalized communities.
Highlights
Since it was first declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO)on 11 March 2020 [1], the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has developed into the worst pandemic in over 100 years [2]
This study shows that socioeconomic factors are strongly correlated to both COVID-19 vaccination rates and incidence rates, underscoring the need to improve COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in marginalized communities
The second principal component was strongly positively correlated with rural counties and homeownership (Figure S2). These results suggest that factors related to housing problems contribute to a significant source of variation in the dataset, and these factors are distinct from the number of uninsured individuals, number of primary care physicians, and other socioeconomic factors that are strongly correlated with the first principal component
Summary
Since it was first declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO)on 11 March 2020 [1], the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has developed into the worst pandemic in over 100 years [2]. As of 13 August 2021, there have been more than 200 million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide, including more than 4.3 million reported deaths [3]. COVID-19 cases and 600,000 reported deaths [4]. This has resulted in the deepest global economic recession since World War 2 [5]. To combat this deadly pandemic, companies and researchers around the world have been racing to develop treatments [6] and vaccines [7], and national governments have been working to obtain access to vaccines and rapidly administer them to their populations. 30.8% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 16.1% are fully vaccinated [9]
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