Iowa had administered 567,609 first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Thursday afternoon — covering 99.4% of the prioritized population that’s currently eligible for the vaccine.
Roughly 206,000 Iowans have been fully vaccinated.
Iowa continues to rank 49th among the states when measured by the percent of population to have received two doses of the vaccine. In Iowa, that percentage is 6.4%, while the national average is 8.4%. Among the states, only Utah, at 6.1%, ranks lower than Iowa, according to current rankings compiled by both the New York Times and the Washington Post.
State officials have said a factor in Iowa’s low ranking is an unspecified number of second-dose vaccines that were administered but were not properly reported as such. The state is working on correcting the issue, according to Gov. Kim Reynolds. The number of uncounted second doses is, according to a Reynolds spokesman, close to 40,000.
Iowa continues to compare well to other states when measured by the percentage of population to have received at least one shot of the vaccine. By that measure, only 16 states rank better than Iowa. On March 1, only 12 states ranked better than Iowa.
As for the spread of the virus, Iowa reported 513 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, and three deaths. On Tuesday, the state reported 26 deaths.
Over the past week, there has been an average of 478 new cases in Iowa each day, a decrease of 13% from the average two weeks ago, according to the New York Times.
Iowa has reported 338,600 cases of the virus and 5,501 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
