Rural Seniors lagging in getting vaccinations, prompting concerns about rural-urban divide

Lagging Vaccination Rates Among Rural Seniors Hint At Brewing Rural-Urban Divide As adults of all ages get access to the COVID-19 vaccines, health researchers worry that the trend could worsen. NPR.org

 ...  an NPR analysis of county-level vaccination data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows signs of an emerging rural-urban divide.

When looking at vaccination rates of all adults 18 and older, rural counties appear to have largely kept pace with their urban counterparts, with rural rates on average landing within 5 percentage points of urban rates in most states.

However, among people who are 65 years old or older, the gap between rural and urban counties is wider in most states. Urban counties' vaccination rates outpace rural ones in all but seven states for which there's complete data. In 17 states, urban rates exceed rural rates by 5 or more percentage points.

The wider gaps in vaccination rates among senior citizens could foreshadow a brewing rural-urban divide, several experts told NPR.

"It would suggest that we're potentially starting to see that trend [of rural/urban disparities] emerge because older adults, by and large, have had the opportunity to get vaccinated at this point," says Timothy Callaghan, a health policy researcher from Texas A&M University's Southwest Rural Health Research Center.

That leaves only the more vaccine-hesitant behind, Callaghan adds. In other words, the vaccination rates seen in seniors may very well presage vaccination rates that could be expected among all adults, once younger adults have had similar opportunities to get their shots.

In some cases, data shows these rural-urban gaps are significant. Nebraska, Massachusetts and Louisiana have the largest gaps among seniors, with rural Nebraskan counties averaging about 19 percentage points behind the state's urban counties. ...

ALSO SEE: Republican vaccine resistance continues