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
- COVID-19 vaccine issues: Stories from COVID-19 Data Dispatch readers across the U.S.Last week, I asked you, COVID-19 Data Dispatch readers, to send me your stories of challenges you experienced when trying to get this fall’s COVID-19 vaccines. I received 35 responses from readers across the country, demonstrating issues with insurance coverage, pharmacy logistics, and more.
- Did you have a hard time getting an updated COVID-19 vaccine? Tell us about it.Even though the updated COVID-19 vaccines are supposed to be free—either covered by insurance plans or by a federal program—people keep getting bills. I’d like to collect stories about vaccine access challenges here at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch.
- Sources and updates, September 17Sources and updates for the week of September 17 include public comments to the CDC about infection controls, nasal spray recommendations, wastewater surveillance for flu, and more.
- New COVID-19 vaccines are now available: 10 key facts and statistics about these shotsWe now have two new COVID-19 vaccines available for this year’s respiratory virus season, one from Pfizer and one from Moderna, which are expected to perform well against current variants. The FDA approved both vaccines this week, and the CDC recommended them for almost all Americans. A third option, from Novavax, may become available in the coming weeks as well.