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And experts say those who do tend to be frail or have conditions that interfere with the vaccine’s effectiveness in producing protection.
ABC News has contacted 50 hospitals in 17 states and asked them to share data on current COVID-19 patients in their intensive care units, including their vaccination status. In the hospitals surveyed, ABC News found that the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 patients currently treated in intensive care units were not vaccinated.
Of the 271 total COVID patients in intensive care units surveyed, 255 patients, or about 94%, were not vaccinated against COVID-19 in the ABC News snapshot.
In addition, of the 16 vaccinated people receiving intensive care unit care, almost all had comorbidities and other health problems, such as cancer or a weakened immune system. ABC News only heard of one otherwise healthy, fully vaccinated individual with no reported underlying condition who was in intensive care.
According to the CDC, “vaccine breakthrough cases are expected” and, therefore, “there will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who will still get sick, be hospitalized or die from COVID-19.” But data on the immunization status of intensive care patients is not regularly reported or readily available at the federal or state level.
“The current outbreak of COVID-19 is caused by those who have chosen not to be immune. We will continue to see the unbalanced impact of COVID among the unvaccinated, as they account for the vast majority of serious illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths, ”said ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
The sampling of hospitals also appears to reflect a national trend. According to the White House COVID-19 task force, severe breakthrough infections remain rare, and almost all of the patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 – 97% – are not vaccinated.
Dr Lew Kaplan, former president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and professor of surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said the data from the ABC News survey “provides clear indications regarding the variant. SARS-CoV-2 delta – – that the vaccines work. “
Further, Kaplan said, the very fact that “the overwhelming majority of critically ill hospitalized patients with this viral variant are not vaccinated, should lead our country to relentlessly pursue immunization of every eligible individual.”
“It is our duty and our privilege to save lives,” Kaplan said. “The COVID-19 vaccine is incredibly effective in helping us keep people at home and alive. “
Frontline workers back the numbers
ABC News’s findings are also supported by local data. In Springfield, Missouri, county health officials reported this week that since vaccines became available, 96.5% of people who have died from COVID in the community have not been fully vaccinated.
Mercy Hospital nurse Emily McMichael said the county’s findings are corroborated by what she saw.
“These patients are a lot sicker and a lot younger than what we saw last time around, so it’s really sad to see,” McMichael said. “And a large part of the population is not vaccinated.”
In Alabama, which has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, 94% of currently hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated according to state statistics – and hospital admissions are six times higher than barely a month ago, as reported by health workers. an influx of COVID-positive patients requiring care.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital has seen “an explosion of cases”, the number having increased tenfold in the past three weeks, according to Dr. Kierstin Kennedy, chief of hospital medicine.
The patients currently in hospital, Kennedy said, are younger than those who were hospitalized in the last outbreak – but sadly, they’re just as sick. The vast majority of these patients are not vaccinated, she said.
Likewise, in Florida, state statistics show virus-related hospitalizations are nearing their highest level since the start of the pandemic, with more than 1,200 COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital each day.
“It is heartbreaking because all of this could have been avoided; it is unnecessary human suffering that we are witnessing right now,” said Dr Seetha Lakshmi, medical director of the Global Emerging Diseases Institute at Tampa General Hospital, where she served. said “almost all” Patients are currently unvaccinated.
Another doctor from Florida said he believed low vaccination rates were one of the driving factors behind the significant increase in the number of COVID-19 patients in the state.
“The vaccine is really protective in terms of hospitalization or death, and the people we see who are sick, who end up on ventilators and end up in hospital are unvaccinated patients,” Dr. David Wein, emergency physician at Tampa General , told ABC News.
Few severe hospitalizations for fully vaccinated people
Just a month ago, Amanda Spencer, 37, an unvaccinated mother of two from Ohio, was infected with the virus while on a family vacation in Florida. She spent 16 days in a Florida hospital, 11 of which were in an induced coma.
“I never dreamed that I would go through what I did and be about to leave my family,” Spencer told ABC News.
Spencer said that before her illness she hadn’t necessarily been against the vaccine, but struggled to find time to get the vaccine – and was to some extent afraid of side effects.
However, his illness changed his perspective.
“After going through what I went through, I would have much preferred to get the vaccine and maybe have had some side effects,” Spencer said, adding that she now plans to get the vaccine as soon as she gets it. could. “Everyone has the right to decide what’s best for them, but my advice is that if you have an underlying disease, whether it’s asthma or any other type of breathing problem, I would definitely consider getting the vaccine. “
Although patients with underlying conditions are generally at higher risk, Dr Kennedy said that from what she has seen, “patients who have co-morbidities and who are vaccinated do not get sick enough. to require intubation “.
And several hospitals contacted by ABC News reported that often COVID-19 vaccinated patients in intensive care are hospitalized for reasons other than COVID-19.
“You may see patients vaccinated against COVID in intensive care, but a lot of them are not in intensive care for severe COVID,” Dr. Jennifer Leonard, intensive care physician at the ICU, told ABC News. Barnes Jewish Hospital in Missouri. “They have mild or asymptomatic COVID and they need an intensive care bed for another illness or indication.”
Overall, Kaplan said data from the ABC News survey shows that “even if you are vaccinated you can still get sick, but it is so much less common that the benefit of being vaccinated is vast. C ‘is incredibly protective and it protects you, the people you love, and the people you work with. “
While the vaccine doesn’t 100% prevent disease, it lessens the impact for the most part, Kaplan said.
“Fully vaccinated individuals are less likely to get seriously ill because they have prepared their immune systems,” he said.
Kennedy said she was combating reluctance to vaccinate by telling patients that at this point millions of people around the world have received the vaccines, with minimal side effects. The long-term side effect of vaccination, she tells her patients, is that they don’t die from COVID-19.
And what about the worry often expressed by people waiting to be vaccinated because they don’t want to be guinea pigs?
Kennedy said she told her patients that “if you don’t want to be a guinea pig then don’t get COVID.”
ABC News Sony Salzman, Eric Strauss, Dr Alexis E. Carrington, Dr Chidimma J. Acholonu, Dr Odelia Lewis, Dr Priscilla Hanudel and Dr Jay Bhatt contributed to this report.
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