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Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows
Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating, (c) 2022, The Washington Post
Fri, April 29, 2022, 8:21 AM
WASHINGTON -- 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.
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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...
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The bulk of vaccinated deaths are among people who did not get a booster shot, according to state data provided to The Post. In two of the states, California and Mississippi, three-quarters of the vaccinated senior citizens who died in January and February did not have booster doses. Regulators in recent weeks have authorized second booster doses for people over the age of 50, but administration of first booster doses has stagnated...