Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the US are now in people who weren’t vaccinated, according to analysis by the Associated Press.

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the US now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, according to analysis by the Associated Press.
Key points:

  • Analysis of available US government data from May shows that infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for about 0.1 per cent of cases
  • The US CDC has not estimated what percentage of hospitalisations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people
  • A former adviser to the Biden administration on COVID-19, suggested that 98 to 99 per cent of the Americans dying of the coronavirus are unvaccinated.

It is a demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day now down to less than 300 could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.
The analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalisations. That’s about 0.1 per cent.
And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8 per cent, or five deaths per day on average.
The AP analysed figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalisations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data.
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Among them, only about 45 states report breakthrough infections, and some are more aggressive than others in looking for such cases. So the data probably understates such infections, CDC officials said.
Still, the overall trend that emerges from the data echoes what many healthcare authorities are seeing around the country and what top experts are saying.
Earlier this month, Andy Slavitt, a former adviser to the Biden administration on COVID-19, suggested that 98 to 99 per cent of the Americans dying of the coronavirus were unvaccinated.
“Nearly every death, especially among adults, due to COVID-19, is, at this point, entirely preventable,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky said.
She called such deaths “particularly tragic”.
Deaths in the US have plummeted from a peak of more than 3,400 day on average in mid-January, one month into the vaccination drive.
About 63 per cent of all vaccine-eligible Americans those 12 and older have received at least one dose, and 53 per cent are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
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While vaccine remains scarce in much of the world, the US supply is so abundant and demand has slumped so dramatically that shots sit unused.
Ross Bagne, a 68-year-old small-business owner in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was eligible for the vaccine in early February but didn’t get it.
He died June 4, infected and unvaccinated, after spending more than three weeks in the hospital, his lungs filling with fluid. He was unable to swallow because of a stroke.
“He never went out, so he didn’t think he would catch it,” said his grieving sister, Karen McKnight.
“Why take the risk of not getting vaccinated?”
The preventable deaths will continue, experts predict, with unvaccinated pockets of the nation experiencing outbreaks in the fall and winter.
Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said modeling suggested the nation would hit 1,000 deaths per day again next year.
In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, with only about 33 per cent of the population fully protected, cases, hospitalisations and deaths are rising.
“It is sad to see someone go to the hospital or die when it can be prevented,” Governor Asa Hutchinson tweeted as he urged people to get their shots.
AP
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