A US study confirms how strongly vaccinated people benefit from the protection against severe courses: 99.9 percent of hospital admissions by Corona therefore affect unvaccinated people or people without complete vaccination protection.
According to a data analysis by the Associated Press news agency, deaths from the coronavirus in the USA almost only affect unvaccinated people. The agency sees the result as “amazing evidence” of the effectiveness of the vaccines, as it could also reduce the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the US to practically zero, provided everyone has access to a vaccination. The US is currently experiencing around 300 Covid-19-related deaths every day.
The agency evaluated data from the United States Health Authority (CDC) for May for the investigation. Accordingly, more than 18,000 people in the United States died of Covid-19 this month. Of these, only 150 were fully vaccinated. This corresponds to a percentage of 0.8 percent or around five deaths in one day.
High protection, even against severe gradients
The data also substantiate the protection against severe disease caused by the vaccination. AP lists more than 853,000 hospital admissions related to Covid-19 disease for the month of May. Fewer than 1200 people were fully vaccinated. This corresponds to a share of around 0.1 percent. In other words: 99.9 percent of people who have to be treated in hospital for Covid disease had no or incomplete vaccination protection.
SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach spoke with a view to the analysis of “good and important news”. The probability of dying from Covid-19 as a fully vaccinated person tends to be “towards zero” in the USA.
According to the CDC, the data on which the study is based also have weaknesses. Only 45 of the 50 official US states report so-called “breaktrough infections”, ie infections despite a complete vaccination. The number of illnesses despite vaccination could therefore not be fully recorded in the data.
The trend is still clear and also reflects the assessment of health experts, according to the report. The CDC director Rochelle Walensky said this week that the vaccine is so effective that almost every death in adults is “completely preventable” at this point in time. She described such deaths as “particularly tragic”.
53.7 percent of the US population have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the CDC. According to this, 45.6 percent are fully vaccinated. After the vaccination campaign in the USA had progressed quickly at first, there has been a clear slowdown in the rate of vaccination in recent weeks. Epidemiologist David Michaels now hopes that reports of unvaccinated deaths can convince more people of the benefits of vaccination. In the case of younger people, however, the focus is probably on the desire to protect family members or friends with a vaccination, says Michaels.
14,000 deaths prevented
The British government also announced major successes of the vaccination campaign this week: According to this, 14,000 lives have already been saved in the country with the help of the vaccines. In the largest part of England, 44,500 hospital admissions were also prevented, said the British vaccination state secretary Nadhim Zahawi at a press conference on Wednesday.
So far, more than 70.5 million vaccine doses against the coronavirus have been administered in Germany. Almost 53 percent of the population received at least one dose of vaccine. At least one in three people is considered fully vaccinated – around 34 percent of the population. With this, Germany could soon reach and overtake the US vaccination quota.
