The most vaccinated place in America will surprise you (Hint: It's not Vermont)

Greg P. | 9:10 PM on October 17, 2021

And the winner of the most vaccinated place in America is . . . PUERTO RICO?!

When folks think about highly vaccinated places in America

They think Vermont or CT or MA

Those places are good

But not the most vaccinated place in America

So who's #1?

Puerto Rico!

But PR has gotten way too little attention

Its worth reflecting on how they did it

Thread

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

Puerto Rico at 72% of its population vaccinated even beats out Vermont which is at 70.5%:

So lets talk numbers

Proportion of population fully vaccinated

MA is 68.8%

CT and RI are both at 69.8%

VT is at 70.5%

PR? 72.0%

Among older folks (those >65) fully vaccinated

VT is highest state at 96.3%

Puerto Rico? 99.9%. Basically everyone

And its paying off

2/5

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

“And today, PR has one of the lowest infections rats in America”:

Since July 1, when the Delta wave started

VT has had 50% more cases than PR

And today, PR has one of the lowest infections rates in America

Here's data from @CovidActNow

You can see Puerto Rico has one of the lowest infection rate in the US (way lower than most states) pic.twitter.com/WRGFHHkpiW

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

Note: “PR has more people than 21 states”:

Ah you say, but its Puerto Rico – and they are tiny

Actually, no

They are about 5 times bigger than VT

And PR has more people than 21 states

So how have they done it?

Its not their immense wealth – PR is actually quite poor compared to much of the US

4/6

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

So how has PR done it?

Best I can tell, they’ve done this largely by not tying vaccines to politics

They pay less attention to mainland politics

All their political parties actively support vaccinations

And generally, political identify & vaccinations are not intermixed

5/6

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

This is pretty surprising, actually:

So next time someone tells you

Oh, only "wealthy" New England states can achieve high vaccination rates

Remind them that the super star in America is not VT or CT or MA or RI

Its Puerto Rico

Doing a fabulous job vaccinating its people to keep everyone safe

End

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) October 17, 2021

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