Health officials provided new data that shows how effective vaccines and booster doses are at preventing people from dying due to COVID-19.
Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters that unvaccinated people are 97 times more likely to die from COVID than those who have received the primary vaccine series and the booster shot.
“The number of average weekly deaths for those who are unvaccinated was 9.7 per 100,000 people, but only 0.7 per 100,000 people for those who were vaccinated. This means the risk of dying from COVID-19 was 14 times higher for people who were unvaccinated compared to those who received only a primary series,” Walensky said.
“For those who were boosted, the average of weekly deaths was 0.1 per 100,000 people, meaning that unvaccinated individuals were 97 times more likely to die compared to those who were boosted,” she added.
Walensky also provided data highlighting the increased risk of hospitalization unvaccinated people have.
“These data show us that the percent of people who are currently hospitalized due to COVID-19 are disproportionately unvaccinated and disproportionately not boosted. Additionally, these data confirm that vaccination and boosting continue to protect against severe illness and hospitalization even during the Omicron surge,” she explained.
Walensky said that while the number of new cases and hospitalizations were down over the past week, the number of deaths has ticked up slightly.
“The current seven-day daily average of cases is about 446,400 cases per day, a decrease of about 36 percent over the previous week. The seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 17,100 per day, also a decrease of about 14 percent over the previous week. And the seven-day average daily deaths are about 2,300 per day, which is an increase of about 4 percent over the prior week,” she said.
