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, who have they accomplished this? Some thoughts:
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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