COVID-19: Data shows vaccines reduce risk of hospitalisation and death – but you need to read it with a clear head
However, of those dying of COVID-19 in recent months, a comfortable majority – around 64% – had received at least a single dose of one of the vaccines.
by Ed Conway
Let’s begin with a statistic that might surprise you, and possibly alarm you.
Of those dying of COVID-19 in recent months, a comfortable majority – around 64% – had received at least a single dose of one of the vaccines.
It is there in black and white on Public Health England’s data tables: of the 460 people who died between February and July having tested positive for the Delta variant, 289 had been double-jabbed; some 65 had received one dose. And 165 had not been vaccinated at all.
Does this mean the vaccines aren’t doing what we expected? Not necessarily. To see why, it’s worth delving into the PHE numbers, but before doing so, keep in your mind two critical points.
The first is that the majority of UK adults have now been vaccinated. Indeed, break it down by age group and you’ll see that of those aged over 50 around 91% have been vaccinated – most of them with two jabs.Advertisement
The second is that the vaccines don’t entirely reduce the risk of either catching the disease or being hospitalised or dying of it. They are not 100% effective. But they do, at least on the basis of tests from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, reduce the likelihood of both of these outcomes considerably.
Continue reading: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-data-shows-vaccines-reduce-risk-of-hospitalisation-and-death-but-you-need-to-read-it-with-a-clear-head-12365728