Younger Americans benefited less from booster shots than older people
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday night published new data on the risks of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 among people who are unvaccinated and vaccinated, with or without booster doses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday night published new data on the risks of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 among people who are unvaccinated and vaccinated, with or without booster doses.
The figures confirm that booster doses are most beneficial to older adults, as the CDC has previously reported. But the new numbers for younger Americans were less compelling. In those age groups, vaccination itself decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that a booster shot did not seem to add much benefit.
The data runs only through the end of December, when the omicron surge had just begun.
Still, several recent studies have found that vaccination alone, without boosters, remained strongly protective against severe illness and death in most people, even after omicron’s appearance.
“I do not think these data support a universal booster rollout for everyone,” said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert and public health researcher at Kaiser Health News.
Boosters seem most essential for older adults, she said, and those who have certain immune conditions or live in long-term care facilities.
As of Dec. 25, the rate of hospitalization among unvaccinated adults older than age 65 was 246 per 100,000 people. That rate dropped to 27.4 per 100,000 among people who were vaccinated without a booster dose, and to 4.9 among those who were vaccinated and received a booster.
There were roughly 44 deaths per 100,000 unvaccinated adults 65 and older. Vaccinations dropped that number to about 3.6 deaths per 100,000, one-twelfth as much. Booster shots reduced the rate further, to about 0.5 deaths per 100,000, a figure 90 times as small.
But such risk comparisons were less useful in younger people, for whom the rate of severe outcomes was already low.
Among adults 50 to 64, 73 unvaccinated adults per 100,000 were hospitalized, compared with 9 per 100,000 among those who were vaccinated and 2 per 100,000 among those who had also received a booster shot.
Boosters made less of a difference in the number of COVID-19 deaths in this age group. Vaccinations decreased the rate to 0.4 deaths per 100,000 from 8.26 per 100,000. With boosters, that number fell to 0.1 deaths per 100,000 people.
The agency did not provide hospitalization numbers for adults 18 through 49, perhaps because the numbers were too small.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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