These Are the Safest States To Ride Out the Pandemic
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Your best bet for avoiding coronavirus may be to head north.
As of Wednesday, distribution of the coronavirus vaccine became President Joe Biden’s problem. And it’s a big one: according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of the day Biden took office, only 2 million people in the United States had received two doses of the vaccine.
Biden has promised to deliver 100 million doses during his administration’s first 100 days in an effort to turn the tide on the pandemic. In the meantime, where are the safest states to hunker down and avoid the virus?
WalletHub, a credit improvement and overall financial advisory firm, issued a report Thursday ranking the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of overall COVID-19 safety. The firm compared the jurisdictions on five measures: vaccination rate, positive testing rate, hospitalization rate, death rate and transmission rate.
Overall, Alaska led the way by a wide margin, on the strength of high vaccination rates and low rates of hospitalization and death. Arizona came in at the bottom of the field, due its high rates of positive tests, transmission of the disease, hospitalization and death.
On the whole, states in the northern part of the country were in comparatively better shape, with Vermont, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota joining Alaska in the top 10 safest states.
Alabama, Mississippi, Nevada and South Carolina appeared at the bottom of the rankings along with Arizona.
Below are the complete rankings:
1. Alaska
2. Vermont
3. Colorado
4. Montana
5. North Dakota
6. Hawaii
7. Iowa
8. Utah
9. Minnesota
10. Missouri
11. Oregon
12. Nebraska
13. Michigan
14. Idaho
15. New Hampshire
16. Washington
17. Maine
18. District of Columbia
19. Ohio
20. Wyoming
21. Illinois
22. Indiana
23. South Dakota
24. Florida
25. Maryland
26. Wisconsin
27. Connecticut
28. West Virginia
29. Delaware
30. New Mexico
31. New Jersey
32. Tennessee
33. North Carolina
34. Kentucky
35. Oklahoma
36. New York
37. Virginia
38. Louisiana
39. Massachusetts
40. Rhode Island
41. Texas
42. Kansas
43. Arkansas
44. Pennsylvania
45. California
46. Georgia
47. South Carolina
48. Nevada
49. Mississippi
50. Alabama
51. Arizona
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