Washington had sixth-lowest COVID death rate in U.S., analysis finds
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Washington state had one of the country's lowest adjusted rates of COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic, according to a recent analysis published in The Lancet.
What they found: Washington's COVID-19 death rate was 286 deaths per 100,000 people, when adjusting to account for age and comorbidities.
- That's about 23% lower than the national adjusted death rate, which was 372 deaths per 100,000 people, and the sixth-lowest death rate among states.
Yes, but: The adjusted COVID-19 death rate in Washington was twice as high as in Hawaii, which had the country's lowest death rate (147 deaths per 100,000 people).
- New Hampshire (215 per 100,000), Maine (218 per 100,000), Vermont (249 per 100,000) and Maryland (285 per 100,000) also had lower adjusted death rates than Washington.
Why it matters: The new report is among the first explorations of the social and economic factors at play during the pandemic in the U.S., and it found a nearly four-fold variation in COVID infection and death rates between states, Axios' Tina Reed reports.
State of play: States with higher poverty, lower rates of educational attainment, less access to quality health care, and lower levels of interpersonal trust saw disproportionately higher rates of COVID infections and deaths.
- The analysis found that states with mandates encouraging mask use, mobility restriction and vaccination — and mandates kept in place longer — experienced lower infection rates.
- But, the authors said, only vaccine coverage had a strong association with state-by-state variation in COVID death rates.