Even as President Joe Biden laments the nation’s sluggish COVID-19 immunization launch for a pace he calls “dismal,” West Virginia is touting its relative success in making the most of vaccine supplies it has received so far.
Fewer than half of the nearly 38 million vaccine doses shipped to date by the federal government have actually made it into the arms of Americans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Thursday.
Some individual states have lagged behind with just a third or 40% of their vaccine allotments being administered as of Thursday, marking the one-year anniversary of the first locally transmitted COVID-19 case documented in the United States.
But West Virginia, a mostly rural state of nearly 2 million residents known for its rugged mountain terrain, stands far above the national average, using 72% of the doses it has received to date, CDC data shows. Only North Dakota, home to fewer than 800,000 people, has done that well.
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West Virginia also ranks a close second behind Alaska in terms of how much of its population, 9.3%, has been inoculated. Alaska, much larger and more remote geographically, has administered at least the first of the two-dose COVID vaccine to 9.8% of its residents, by comparison.
Source: Reuters
