Unvaccinated People Account For Nearly All New COVID Deaths
New numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control analyzed by the Associated Press show that nearly every COVID death in May was someone who had not been vaccinated
After a year of shelter in place orders, Americans have been eager to venture out and return to some semblance of normal. We are, however, still in a pandemic. Vaccination rates, which initially soared, have begun to flatten as some Americans remain hesitant to receive the shot. The news comes as many Americans gathered to celebrate the Independence Day holiday.
The Associated Press analyzed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data and discovered that “only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people.”
Doctors point to the numbers and say getting vaccinated is the best way to protect against COVID-19.
USA Today reports more than 99 percent of recent COVID deaths here in the US have been people who were unvaccinated, a ‘sad and tragic’ situation, says Dr. Anthony Fauci.
What’s more, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said recent data suggests 99.5 percent of the people who died from COVID-19 over the past six months were unvaccinated.
The number is a sad reminder that at this point in the pandemic, COVID-related deaths are preventable among people who qualify to receive the vaccine.
Fauci, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press offered reasons for hesitancy to the vaccine by some Americans, claiming resistance can be “ideological.” He also suggested some people “are just fundamentally anti-vax or anti-science.”
The U.S. is “very fortunate” that it has “enough vaccines to vaccinate essentially everybody in the country,” Fauci said. “And there are people throughout the world who would do anything to get vaccines.”
The U.S. has more than 33.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least 605,500 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 183.6 million cases and more than 3.9 million deaths. More than 157 million Americans have been fully vaccinated – 47.8 percent of the population, according to the CDC.
Public health officials say people should get the shot this summer to help save lives now and prevent the disease from resurfacing in the fall.
The CDC also said another reason to get vaccinated is the delta variant of the virus, with recent studies showing that vaccines provide a high level of protection against the rapidly spreading strain of the virus.
“Any suffering or death from Covid-19 tragic,” Walensky said. “With vaccines available across the country, the suffering and loss we are now seeing is entirely avoidable.”
