CDC study shows unvaccinated people 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid

Unvaccinated people are about 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid-19 compared to those who are fully vaccinated, according to a study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new study, published in the CDC’s Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, also found that the unvaccinated were nearly five times more likely to be infected with Covid than people who received the vaccines. The results are based on data from Los Angeles County between May 1 and July 25, the agency said.

“These data on infection and hospitalization rates indicate that licensed vaccines protected against infection with SARS-CoV-2 and severe COVID-19 during a period when transmission of the Delta variant was increasing,” said writes the agency in the study.

The data is in line with comments from federal and state health officials, who have said for weeks that millions of unvaccinated Americans have put themselves at serious risk for the delta variant, the most contagious strain of coronavirus in this country. day.

As of Monday, more than 201 million Americans, or 60.8% of the total United States population, had at least one injection of Covid, according to data compiled by the CDC. More than 171 million Americans, or 51.5% of the total United States population, are fully vaccinated, according to the agency.

President Joe Biden said on Monday that “virtually all” hospitalizations and deaths from Covid in the United States continue to be among the unvaccinated.

“Be clear: there are cases where vaccinated people contract Covid-19, but they are much less common than unvaccinated people who contract Covid-19. And above all, their conditions are much less serious, “he said during a speech.

U.S. officials are hoping the Food and Drug Administration granting full approval of the Covid vaccine to Pfizer and BioNTech will persuade some unvaccinated Americans to finally get vaccinated.

White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci said if the United States can get through the winter and get the majority of people who haven’t received the vaccines vaccinated, the nation could have some check on the virus by spring.

“As we move into spring, we could start to get back to a certain degree of normalcy, which is getting back to the things we were hoping we could do, restaurants, theaters, that sort of thing,” Fauci said during an interview on CNN “Anderson Cooper 360.”

Tuesday’s study was based on 43,127 infections among residents of Los Angeles County, California. Hospitalizations for Covid were defined as hospital admissions occurring within 14 days of infection, the agency said.

Among all county residents, hospitalization rates have increased “exponentially” among unvaccinated, fully vaccinated and partially vaccinated people, with rates highest among unvaccinated people in late June, the agency said. .

The study had limitations, the agency said.

For example, vaccination data from people who lived in the county at the time of their confirmed infection but who were vaccinated outside of California was not available, resulting in misclassification of their vaccination status, said the agency.