Citation

Donadio G, Choudhary M, Lindemer E, Pawlowski C, Soundararajan V. Vaccines 2021; 9(9).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021)

DOI

10.3390/vaccines9090973

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Equitable vaccination distribution is a priority for outcompeting the transmission of COVID-19. Here, the impact of demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors on county-level vaccination rates and COVID-19 incidence changes is assessed. In particular, using data from 3142 US counties with over 328 million individuals, correlations were computed between cumulative vaccination rate and change in COVID-19 incidence from 1 December 2020 to 6 June 2021, with 44 different demographic, environmental, and socioeconomic factors. This correlation analysis was also performed using multivariate linear regression to adjust for age as a potential confounding variable. These correlation analyses demonstrated that counties with high levels of uninsured individuals have significantly lower COVID-19 vaccination rates (Spearman correlation: −0.460, p-value: <0.001). In addition, severe housing problems and high housing costs were strongly correlated with increased COVID-19 incidence (Spearman correlations: 0.335, 0.314, p-values: <0.001, <0.001). This study shows that socioeconomic factors are strongly correlated to both COVID-19 vaccination rates and incidence rates, underscoring the need to improve COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in marginalized communities. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Language: en

Keywords

human; suicide; incidence; prevalence; principal component analysis; traffic accident; unemployment; housing; risk factor; socioeconomics; vaccination; environmental factor; health insurance; health care cost; Socioeconomic factors; low birth weight; sexually transmitted disease; educational status; prematurity; Article; coronavirus disease 2019; medically uninsured; COVID-19 incidence; Insurance coverage; SARS-CoV-2 vaccine; vaccination coverage; Vaccination rollout