NEBRASKA- Nebraska’s rural communities have a long way to go to reach the levels of vaccination needed to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccination rates in rural Nebraska badly lag those in urban parts of the state. In fact, Nebraska’s rural rates are among the lowest in the region, according to a World-Herald analysis of county vaccination data.

Roughly 40% of Nebraska adults living in rural areas are fully vaccinated, compared with more than 60% of those living in the state’s metro areas. What’s more, the county-level data submitted to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that Nebraska’s rural-urban vaccination divide is the widest in the nation. And Nebraska’s rural vaccination gap among the vulnerable 65-and-over age group also appears to be the nation’s biggest.

“Communities that have chosen to not have a higher rate of vaccination are unfortunately setting themselves up to be preyed upon by some of these more transmissible variants,” said Dr. Mark Rupp, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Nebraska can take a lesson from neighboring Missouri, whose rural vaccination rates are even lower.

The Delta variant has now rushed into that gap, leaving the Show-Me State with the nation’s highest current case rate and inundating rural hospital wards with COVID-19 patients, all at a time the pandemic is supposed to be ending.

Most of the counties with Nebraska’s lowest vaccination rates can be found in the Panhandle and the Sand Hills — sprawling, sparse grasslands where cattle are plentiful and conservatism and general distrust of government are high. In one Sand Hills county, figures suggest that only 11% of adults have been vaccinated.

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