8/18/2023 0 Comments Hospital compare infection rates![]() ![]() In Mississippi - where only about 35 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and where infections and hospitalizations have been surging - vaccinated older people and people with weaker immune systems have been overrepresented among those hospitalized and dying, according to the state health department. The Food and Drug Administration is speeding efforts to authorize booster shots for people with weakened immune systems. It is possible, epidemiologists said, that seniors and people with compromised immune systems could be particularly vulnerable in a surge, even if they were fully vaccinated, because their bodies might not produce a strong immune response from the vaccine. It does not help that, in recent weeks, new research has shown that vaccinated people, if they become infected, can carry high levels of the coronavirus.Īlthough at least 80 percent of people 65 and older are vaccinated in the United States, surging cases could still present an elevated risk for them. “People need to be aware that, to the extent that we can keep the incidence down, the better off everyone’s going to be.” Paul McKinney, associate dean at the University of Louisville’s school of public health in Kentucky. “The more infection rates go up in the background, the more you’re going to see disease among people who were immunized,” said Dr. Essentially - the more that the virus circulates, the more exposures you can expect, and the more breakthroughs you can expect. In interviews, epidemiologists said that the United States is likely to see more breakthroughs, especially in areas where cases are surging. “But that number is really hard to figure out.” “In an ideal world, you would be able to calculate the rates based on the number of people who were actually exposed,” said Kristen Panthagani, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine who runs a blog explaining complicated scientific concepts, including breakthrough infections. Data for unvaccinated individuals includes partially vaccinated people, unvaccinated people, and people with unknown vaccination status. Rates used to calculate comparisons were unrounded. Note: Table shows rates for the entire reporting period for each state calculated with the average vaccination rate for the total population over that period. In those states, people who were not fully vaccinated were hospitalized with Covid-19 at least five times more often than fully vaccinated people, according to the analysis, and they died at least eight times more often. To do this, the Times used the number of breakthroughs and the vaccination rate over time to estimate rates of hospitalizations and deaths for each group in every state for which data was available. ![]() Some epidemiologists and state health officials instead recommend comparing how likely a vaccinated person was to be hospitalized or to die, compared with an unvaccinated person. Imagine a state where just two people are hospitalized but both are vaccinated - breakthroughs would account for 100 percent of the hospitalizations in that state, even though these cases were very rare. In a state with a high vaccination rate, a higher percentage of breakthroughs may simply reflect that fully vaccinated people are a bigger chunk of the population, or that there are few hospitalizations and deaths overall. This may seem counterintuitive, so it’s important to understand why. Looking at how many hospitalizations and deaths have involved fully vaccinated people is a common but crude measure of how well the vaccines are working.Īs more people get shots, the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths among fully vaccinated people should rise. Only about 50 percent of people in the United States are fully vaccinated. But last week, the agency noted that those figures did not reflect new data involving the Delta variant and said it was actively working to update them. Until recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that fully vaccinated people accounted for less than 3 percent of coronavirus hospitalizations nationwide and less than 1 percent of virus deaths. ![]() Data was not available for several states in which the virus has been surging, including Florida and Missouri. Note: Arkansas did not provide counts of breakthrough hospitalizations or deaths, and West Virginia did not provide a count of breakthrough hospitalizations.ĭata on less serious breakthrough infections is not widely available, though it is possible those cases are rising. ![]()
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