The COVID-19 vaccines’ ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.
The CDC has previously estimated that 97 percent of people in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but that data was collected before the spread of delta, a hyper-transmissible variant that many doctors have warned appears to be making people sicker.
The latest CDC analysis estimates that the ability of the COVID vaccines to keep a person out of the hospital is now between 75 percent to 95 percent.
For people older than 75 in particular, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization experienced the steepest decline, from more than 90 percent to 80 percent between June and July.
Health experts are also concerned that a person’s immunity could be waning over time, particularly among older people whose bodies are less likely than younger people to develop a strong immune response to the vaccines.
However, the vaccine still remain highly effective at preventing serious illness, according to the briefing.
As COVID-19 infections steadily increase across the country, the U.S. continues to see a concerning surge in pediatric cases just as children head back to the classroom for a new school year.
Just under 204,000 new child COVID-19 cases were reported last week, marking the second-highest week on record, according to a newly released weekly report that compiles state-by-state data on COVID-19 cases among children from the American Academy ofPediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA).
Since the onset of the pandemic, nearly 4.8 million children have tested positive for COVID-19. Last week, children represented 22.4 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases.
COVID-19 has infected more than 39 million American, which is the current population size of California, the nation’s most populous state with 39.5 million residents, according to census data.
The virus has killed more than 638,000 Americans, reports Johns Hopkins University.
Source-ABC
