Unvaccinated and vaccinated people “are not in the same order of risk”, explains a doctor

Amid fears that new variants are emerging that escape COVID-19 vaccines, health experts repeatedly point out that being fully vaccinated is very different from being unvaccinated.

“We need to be very clear who we are talking about,” Dr Jeremy Faust, emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “The Delta variant is extraordinarily dangerous for the unvaccinated, and it presents a problem for the vaccinated that the previous variant did not, but they are not in the same stage. When we see the implications of most breakthrough infections, this is a small fraction of the problem we have seen without vaccination. “

According to an analysis of 38 states and DCs by the New York Times, unvaccinated Americans in those states were five times more likely than vaccinated Americans to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and eight times more likely to die. A CDC study found that between May 1 and July 25, 2021, unvaccinated residents of Los Angeles County, California were 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than their fully vaccinated counterparts.

“Not convinced that it is really necessary to boost everyone”

The CDC recently announced that booster shots are now available for immunocompromised Americans, which includes those with certain underlying conditions or taking specific immunosuppressants.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said boosters would be available to all Americans eight months after their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, starting this fall. This elicited mixed reactions from the public.

“I think that since we don’t have a real emergency in our hands when it comes to peak hospitalizations in the sense that we don’t have hospitals that are overflowing, it would be very wise to study this. that we should actually be doing, rather than guessing, ”Faust said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) criticized the move and called for a moratorium on booster injections until the world achieves vaccine equity. Many health experts also warn against this due to the lack of evidence that it is necessary.

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Faust explained why he feared widespread distribution of booster vaccines until the overall vaccination rate in the United States increased further.

“I think Delta is an uncomfortable development because it makes it worse for people who have no protection and have not been vaccinated, and it causes more breakthrough cases than any other variant in the past,” said Faust. “And a small subset of those people have serious illness. The question is what to do about it. And I’m not convinced that it’s really necessary to boost everyone given the numbers I’ve calculated. “

Last month, Israel began giving a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine to people aged 60 and older, and found it to offer 5 to 6 times the protection against serious illness and hospitalization after 10 days.

Nonetheless, “I don’t think we expected this boost to suddenly make everyone immune to infection forever,” Faust said. “Again, this seems like a band-aid now. If you are a very small country with limited hospital capacity,” it might be worth doing, but you can only do it so often when it comes to young people. We really need to know what the added benefit of the booster is, as the vaccine already offers tremendous protection against serious illnesses and worse. “

There are three COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the United States. Pfizer (PFE) is 95% effective in preventing serious illness and death, although these numbers are reduced by the Delta variant, Moderna’s vaccine (MRNA) is 94.1% effective. , while Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) is 86% effective.

“We now know that the vaccine also decreases along with COVID,” Faust said. “So what’s a third dose going to do to the kids?” And we would like to know if a third dose has any side effects that are really starting to show up. After the first dose we had a few side effects, a small number in young people, [and] after the second dose it increased. Will a third dose make it go further, or is it so far back in time? It’s more like the first dose – we don’t know. It’s a bad thing to just roll it out and see.

For now, according to Faust, the key is to return to stopping the spread with good social hygiene until vaccination rates improve.

“Until everyone is vaccinated, we have to try to limit the spread,” Faust said. “I think there has been so much talk about boosting that we’ve kind of forgotten the basic stuff, which is to slow it down until everyone is fully protected.”

Adriana Belmonte is a journalist and health policy and policy editor for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at [email protected].

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