MEIGS COUNTY, Tenn. – At a glance, it seemed like a Southern pandemic success story in a most unlikely place.
Rural Meigs County, northeast of Chattanooga, for much of the past year has reported the highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in Tennessee and one of the highest in the South.
The county is overwhelmingly white, rural and conservative – three demographics that strongly correlate with low vaccination rates – but appeared to have broken a pattern of hesitancy and distrust that has stymied vaccination efforts across the U.S.
“They are a rural county, and they have the highest vaccination rate in the state,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee in September as the delta variant spread, praising Meigs County for “leading the way on vaccines.”
But the rate in Meigs County was artificially inflated by a data error that distorted most of Tennessee’s county-level vaccination rates by attributing tens of thousands of doses to the wrong counties, according to a Kaiser Health News review of Tennessee’s vaccination data.