Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows
April 29, 2022
Unvaccinated people accounted for the overwhelming majority of deaths in the United States throughout much of the coronavirus pandemic. But that has changed in recent months, according to a Washington Post analysis of state and federal data.
The pandemic's toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to get shots, with vaccine protection waning over time and the elderly and immunocompromised - who are at greatest risk of succumbing to covid-19, even if vaccinated - having a harder time dodging increasingly contagious strains.
The vaccinated made up 42% of fatalities in January and February during the highly contagious omicron variant's surge, compared with 23% of the dead in September, the peak of the delta wave, according to nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Post. The data is based on the date of infection and limited to a sampling of cases in which vaccination status was known.
As a group, the unvaccinated remain far more vulnerable to the worst consequences of infection - and are far more likely to die - than people who are vaccinated, and they are especially more at risk than people who have received a booster shot.
"It's still absolutely more dangerous to be unvaccinated than vaccinated," said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California at Irvine who studies covid-19 mortality. "A pandemic of - and by - the unvaccinated is not correct. People still need to take care in terms of prevention and action if they became symptomatic."
A key explanation for the rise in deaths among the vaccinated is that covid-19 fatalities are again concentrated among the elderly.
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https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Covid-deaths-no-longer-overwhelmingly-among-17136212.php