Doctors are transporting a patient on a stretcher from an ambulance out of the emergency room to Coral Gables Hospital, where coronavirus patients are being treated at Coral Gables, near Miami, on August 16, 2021.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
According to a study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated people are about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 compared to fully vaccinated people.
The new study, published in the CDC’s weekly morbidity and mortality report, also found that unvaccinated people were nearly five times more likely to become infected with Covid than people who received the shots. The results are based on data from Los Angeles County between May 1 and July 25, the agency said.
“These data on the rate of infection and hospitalization indicate that the authorized vaccines were protective against SARS-CoV-2 and severe COVID-19 infection during a period in which transmission of the Delta variant increased,” he wrote. agency in the studio.
The data coincides with comments from federal and state health officials, who for weeks have said millions of unvaccinated Americans are at serious risk for the delta variant, the most contagious coronavirus strain to date.
As of Monday, more than 201 million Americans, or 60.8% of the total U.S. population, have had at least one Covid trait, according to data collected by the CDC. More than 171 million Americans, or 51.5% of the total U.S. population, are fully vaccinated, according to the agency.
President Joe Biden said Monday that “virtually all” of Covid’s hospitalizations and deaths across the U.S. continue to be part of the unvaccinated.
“Make it clear: there are cases where vaccinated people get Covid-19, but they are much less common than unvaccinated people who get Covid-19. And more importantly, their conditions are much less severe.” , he said during a speech.
U.S. officials expect the Food and Drug Administration to grant full approval of the Covid vaccine to Pfizer and BioNTech will persuade some unvaccinated Americans to finally receive the shots.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, said that if the United States can spend the winter and vaccinate most people who have not been shot, the nation could have some control over the virus in the United States. spring.
“As we enter spring, we could start to regain a certain degree of normalcy, that is, resume the things we hoped to be able to do, restaurants, theaters, that kind of thing,” Fauci said during an interview on the network “Anderson” Cooper 360. “
The study was based Tuesday on 43,127 infections in residents in Los Angeles County, California. Covid hospitalizations were defined as hospital admissions that occur within 14 days of infection, the agency said.
Among all county residents, hospitalization rates increased “exponentially” among unvaccinated people, fully vaccinated and partially vaccinated, with the highest rates among unvaccinated people in late June, according to the agency.
The study had limitations, the agency said.
For example, vaccination data from people living in the county at the time of confirming the infection, but who were vaccinated outside of California, were not available, which led to an erroneous classification of their vaccination status, he said. agency.