COLUMBIA, S.C. — The main message from this week's vaccine update from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC): the COVID vaccine works and more people need to get it.
Assistant state epidemiologist Dr. Jane Kelly shares data from a two-week study in June that had unfortunate results for unvaccinated people.
“Every analysis that I have seen continues to show that the overwhelming majority of people who are continuing to get COVID19 and have severe disease and have been hospitalized or are dying from COVID19, were those who were not fully vaccinated," Dr. Kelly said.
DHEC went back and looked at the vaccination status of newly reported COVID-19 cases in early June and compiled this data.
“Of the 1,635 newly reported cases from which we were able to determine the individual's vaccination status, 1,540 cases where - 94% of those new cases were not fully vaccinated," Dr. Kelly said.
She added that, of 92 cases that required hospitalization, 90% of those people were unvaccinated.
“And the most sobering data point of all," Dr. Kelly said. "We learned that of the 11 people who were reported with death from COVID19 during that same two-week period, for whom we knew the vaccine status, all 11 individuals, 100% of them were not fully vaccinated.”
Dr. Kelly said that this did not have to happen, that COVID-19 is a vaccine-preventable disease, and that those vaccines are available.
“It could have helped to save their lives if they had been fully vaccinated," Dr. Kelly said.
Dr. Kelly said that it's very important to understand that the vaccine is our best option to getting over COVID19.
“I can’t think of a more impactful point to make that would encourage someone to get vaccinated, to receive their shots right away,” she said.
From SCDHEC:
"We recently went back and looked at the vaccination status of newly reported COVID-19 cases for a 2-week period in early June, from June 1-14. Here are provisional results from that analysis:
- During that two-week period, of the 1,635 newly reported cases for which we were able to determine the individuals’ vaccine status, 1,540 cases – or 94% of those new cases – were not fully vaccinated.
- During that same period, of the 92 reported cases that required hospitalization and for which we were able to determine vaccine status, 83 of those individuals – or 90.2% – were not fully vaccinated.
- We learned that of the 11 reported deaths during those two weeks where vaccine status was able to be determined, all 11 individuals – 100% of them – were not considered fully vaccinated."