COVID-19 Progression: A County-Level Analysis of Vaccination and Case Fatality in Mississippi, USA

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a severe upheaval in the U.S., with a particular burden on the state of Mississippi, which already has an exhausted healthcare burden. The main objectives of this study are: (1) to analyze the county-level COVID-19 cases, deaths, and vaccine distribution and (2) to determine the correlation between various social determinants of health (SDOH) and COVID-19 vaccination coverage. We analyzed COVID-19-associated data and county-level SDOH factors in 82 counties of Mississippi. The cumulative COVID-19 and socio-demographic data variables were grouped into feature and target variables. The statistical and exploratory data analysis (EDA) was conducted using Python 3.8.5. The correlation between the target and feature variables was performed by Pearson Correlation analysis. The heat Map Correlation Matrix was visually presented to illustrate the correlation between each pair of features and each target variable. Results indicated that people of Asian descent had the highest vaccination coverage of 77% fully vaccinated compared to 52%, 46%, 42% and 25% for African Americans, Whites, Hispanics, and American Indians/Alaska Natives, respectively. The county-level vaccination rate was significantly higher among the minority populations than the White population. It was observed that COVID-19 cases and deaths were positively correlated with per capita income and negatively correlated with the percentage of persons without a high school diploma (age 25+). This study strongly demonstrates that different SDOH factors influence the outcome of the COVID-19 vaccination rate, which also affects the total number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Vaccine promotion should be given to all populations regardless of race and ethnicity to achieve uniform acceptance. Therefore, statewide policy recommendations focusing on specific community needs should help achieve health equity in COVID-19 vaccination management.