The personal finance website WalletHub Thursday released its survey of the safest states to live in during the COVID-19 pandemic and ranked Virginia among the safer places. The commonwealth wound up in the number-20 slot among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
As the website pointed out, some states are safer than others based on how well they have kept the pandemic under control and how much they are vaccinating. To find out the safest states during the COVID-19 pandemic, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across five key metrics.
The metrics WalletHub used to determine the states’ rankings were the vaccination rate, the positive testing rate, the hospitalization rate, the death rate, and the estimated COVID transmission rate.
The website noted that as the U.S. continues its efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic amid a surge in cases caused by variant strains, staying safe is one of Americans’ top concerns. Safety is also essential for getting the economy back on track as the lower COVID-19 transmission and deaths are in a state, the fewer restrictions there will be and the more confidence people will have to shop in person.
While almost all states have fully reopened, the website notes, the country will be able to completely get back to life as normal only when once most of the population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. The good news is that the U.S. is picking up speed with vaccination as almost 55% of the population had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Tuesday, Sept. 21.
According to WalletHub’s rankings of the states the 10 safest places during the pandemic are 1. Massachusetts 2. Vermont 3. Connecticut 4. California 5. Rhode Island 6. New Jersey 7. New York 8. The District of Columbia 9. Maine and 10. Maryland.
Winding up at the bottom of the rankings as the least safe states are 42. Mississippi 43. Montana 44. Kentucky 45. Oklahoma 46. South Carolina 47. Wyoming 48. Georgia 49. West Virginia 50. Idaho and 51. Alabama.
