Community Profile Reports now have vaccination data

You can now get vaccination numbers for U.S. states, counties, and metropolitan areas in an easily downloadable format: the Community Profile Reports published daily by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These reports are basically the HHS’s one-stop shop for COVID-19 data, including information on cases, deaths, PCR tests, hospitalizations—and now, vaccines. (Read more about the reports here.)

For counties and metro areas, the reports just include numbers and percentages of people who have been fully vaccinated, reported for the overall population and the regions’ seniors (age 65+). For states, the reports include more comprehensive information that matches the data available at the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.

I visualized the county-level data, including both the overall and 65+ rates. I think this chart demonstrates how valuable it is for the public to have easy access to these data: you can see much more specific patterns reflecting which communities are ahead on vaccination and which still need to catch up.

A COVID Tracking Project friend alerted me to this data news last Monday, April 19. When I dug back into the past couple weeks of Community Profile Reports, however, I found that the HHS started including vaccination data in these reports one week earlier, on April 12. As seems to be common for federal data updates, the new information wasn’t announced in press briefings or other standard lines of communication.

Next, I would love to see the CDC make more granular demographic data available so that we can analyze these patterns with an equity lens. State-level or county-level vaccination rates by race and ethnicity would be huge.

As a reminder, you can find the CDD’s annotations on all major U.S. national and state vaccine data sources here.

More vaccine coverage

• Sources and updates, November 12November 12, 2023
  Sources and updates for the week of November 12 include new vaccination data, a rapid test receiving FDA approval, treatment guidelines, and more.
• How is the CDC tracking the latest round of COVID-19 vaccines?October 15, 2023
  Following the end of the federal public health emergency in May, the CDC has lost its authority to collect vaccination data from all state and local health agencies that keep immunization records. As a result, the CDC is no longer providing comprehensive vaccination numbers on its COVID-19 dashboards. But we still have some information about this year’s vaccination campaign, thanks to continued CDC efforts as well as reporting by other health agencies and research organizations.
• Sources and updates, October 8October 8, 2023
  Sources and updates for the week of October 8 include new papers about booster shot uptake, at-home tests, and Long COVID symptoms.
• COVID source shout-out: Novavax’s booster is now availableOctober 8, 2023
  This week, the FDA authorized Novavax’s updated COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s why some people are excited to get Novavax’s vaccine this fall, as opposed to Pfizer’s or Moderna’s.