The Daily Yonder, a website that covers rural issues, reports that vaccinations in rural America have been increasing since mid-August, when the Delta variant took hold.
However, the site’s county-by-county analysis finds that Southwest and Southside Virginia remain in the lowest category.
Outside of Northern Virginia, only four rural counties in Virginia showed faster-than-average increases in vaccinations and none were in Southwest or Southside. The closest is Highland County; the others are Goochland County just east of Richmond and three counties along the Chesapeake Bay: Middlesex County, Accomack County and Northampton County.
Although Highland has a relatively high vaccination for a rural county, Gov. Ralph Northam on Monday called attention to the county’s low vaccination rate among eligible students. The county’s newspaper, The Recorder, has more.
You can find the county-by-county stats here. The Virginia Department of Health updates statistics daily here.