COVID-19 continues to wallop Republican states and areas in the US as partisan vaccine refusal persists

• Republican vaccine refusal is continuing to fuel COVID-19 outbreaks in primarily GOP areas.
• New maps and charts from The New York Times show stark regional disparities in cases and deaths.
• Kaiser Foundation data shows a nearly 13-point gap in vaccination rates between Biden and Trump counties.

COVID-19 is continuing to devastate predominately Republican states and regions largely due to stubborn vaccine refusal and hesitancy in red regions of the country.

A series of new charts and graphics from The New York Times demonstrate the increasingly stark partisan divides in vaccination and how they drive outbreaks in areas that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Nationwide, 75% of eligible Americans aged 12 and up have received at least one vaccine dose with 65% considered fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.

But the data broken down at the state and county level show that Democratic areas account for far more of the country's vaccinations.

Nineteen out of the top 20 states and the District of Columbia with the highest vaccination rates among adults aged 18+ voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, according to The Times' data, while 19 of the 2020 states with lowest vaccination rates among that age group voted for Trump.

According to mid-September data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 52.8% of people in counties that voted for Biden are fully vaccinated compared to 39.9% in counties that voted for Trump, a nearly 13 percentage point gap.

The Times' charts and visuals show a strong positive correlation between a state's 2020 vote share for Trump and COVID-19 cases and deaths, but a strong negative correlation between 2020 Trump share and vaccination rates.

While cases have begun to decline nationwide, states and regions that voted for Trump are continuing to get hit the hardest by the Delta variant, which ravaged states like Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, and other southern states over the summer.

The states with the current worst per-capita rates of COVID-19 are Alaska, Wyoming, West Virginia, Montana, and Kentucky, and all states in the top 10 highest per-capita COVID-19 rates voted for Trump in 2020.

The disparities in vaccine rates have also led to a sharp divergence in death rates at the county level. According to data analyzed by healthcare expert Charles Gaba cited by The Times, COVID-19 has killed 47 out of every 100,000 people in counties Trump won by over 70% but only 10 out of 100,000 people in counties where Trump received about a third of the vote share.

With efforts at persuading the unvaccinated continuing to hit a wall, some localities, colleges and universities, and employers are now mandating vaccination or weekly testing as a condition of employment or entering indoor venues.

But vaccine requirements have been flashpoints in political tugs-of-war between Republican governors like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott, who have moved to ban such mandates, and localities and private businesses who have sought to impose them.

The Biden administration is taking a more aggressive stane countering vaccine refusal, with Biden recently introduicing new mandates including a federal requirement for employers with 100 or more workers to establish a vaccination or weekly testing mandate for employees.