What Is a Vaccinated Person’s Risk of Dying from COVID?
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.
To calculate the risk of hospitalization or death after getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 you need to know the total number of infections. The problem is that nobody knows exactly how many people have been infected by the coronavirus. So while it is very hard to estimate the true risk of dying if you are vaccinated and come down with COVID-19, there are some ways to better understand the risks.
The omicron variant is incredibly infectious, but the risk of it causing significant illness is much lower compared to previous strains. It’s great that omicron is less severe, but that may lead to fewer people seeking tests if they are infected. When you combine all these factors, the result is that the official, reported count of coronavirus cases in the U.S. is far lower than the actual number.
Another way to estimate cases is to rely on mathematical models. Researchers have used these models to make estimates of total case numbers and also for infection fatality rates. But the models don’t distinguish between estimated infections of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that hospitalization rates are 16 times higher in unvaccinated adults compared to fully vaccinated ones, and rates of death are 14 times higher.