PA Nation's 8th Least-Safe State During COVID-19 Outbreak: Study

Eric Heyl
·1 min read

PENNSYLVANIA — If you want to be have as little risk as possible of contracting coronavirus, a new study suggests that Pennsylvania is not the place to be. Financial data site WalletHub rated Pennsylvania just the 44th safest state in America in pandemic-related matters.

With the virus needing to be slowed significantly before the economy can fully recover from the hit it has absorbed from COVID-19, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across five key factors: the rates of transmission, positive testing, hospitalizations, deaths and the portion of the eligible population getting vaccinated.

To arrive at the rankings, WalletHub used information from the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The COVID Tracking Project and rt.live.

Pennsylvania's ranking in most of the metrics were disappointing:

  • Positive testing rate: 23rd.

  • Hospitalization rate: 32nd.

  • Vaccination rate: 38th.

  • Death rate: 49th.

The only states that ranked worse than Pennsylvania overall were California, Georgia, South Carolina, Nevada, Mississippi, Alabama and Arizona. The safest COVID-19 states? Alaska, Vermont, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota.

Based on how states voted in the 2020 presidential election, WalletHub determined that red states were slightly safer. The average red state ranking was 25.64; the average blue state ranking was 26.35.

See the entire WalletHub report here.


This article originally appeared on the Pittsburgh Patch