Friday, January 29, 2021

State Covid-19 pandemic performance update

This blog post provides relative rankings of states in four coronavirus disease (COVID-19) performance categories.  This update is published now because there was significant spread throughout the country that began in October, but is now subsiding.  It is also issued at this time because vaccines have now been distributed for more than a month and some measures of performance are now available to assess state vaccine implementation.  

The United States exceeded 25 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 430,000 related deaths this week.  A dramatic increase in cases and deaths began in October.  The event is subsiding as new cases and 7 day averages decrease across the country.  Daily deaths that typically lag cases by about two weeks have also begun to decline. 

Thus far, 48,386,275 vaccine doses have been distributed to states and territories and some federal departments and agencies.  26,193,682 doses have been administered, of which 4,263,056 were second doses.

Second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine  and the Moderna vaccine are administered 28 and 21 days respectively after the first dose.  Second doses are an increasing portion of doses administered from state vaccine allotments.

Like so much of the pandemic response, specific vaccination priorities within states fall under the authority of governors aided by federal funding and FDA recommendations.