CDC Now Reports COVID Cases and Deaths by Vax Status

The CDC has begun to provide weekly data on COVID-19 cases and deaths by vaccination status, illustrating the stark differences between those who have received the shots and those who haven’t — and even revealing some differences between vaccines.

Users can parse the data by vaccine product, and while the unvaccinated have the highest rates of cases and deaths, there’s a numeric divergence for the three vaccines as well.

Deaths among the unvaccinated peaked the week starting August 8, at 13.23 per 100,000 population, while deaths among those who had been vaccinated with one of the three products remained under four per 100,000 that week. For the vaccinated, deaths were numerically highest among Johnson & Johnson recipients, at 3.14 per 100,000, followed by Pfizer at 1.43, and Moderna at 0.73.

Cases were similarly highest among the unvaccinated, peaking at about 736 per 100,000 for the week starting August 15. Again, there were numeric differences between vaccine groups, with Johnson & Johnson being the highest (172), followed by Pfizer (135), and Moderna (86).

Despite those differences, the overall message is clear: the unvaccinated were at far higher risk of being infected with and dying from COVID-19.

The latest data from August 29-September 4 show that less than one vaccinated person per 100,000 had died the previous week compared with more than nine unvaccinated people per 100,000. Overall, in August, according to the tool, unvaccinated people were 6.1 times more likely than fully vaccinated people to test positive for COVID-19 and 11.3 times more likely to die from it.

“The vaccines are extremely effective, and showing the data are key,” said Leana Wen, MD, MSc, an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at George Washington University. “This tool continues to emphasize the key point that vaccines prevent infections and, critically, dramatically reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19.”

Users can also search by age group, and differences among those between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

A CDC press officer told MedPage Today in an email that the “purpose of the new page is to provide information to the public on rates of cases and deaths among fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” The data “show that more people who are unvaccinated have severe outcomes due to COVID-19 versus people who are fully vaccinated.” Similar data had appeared in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from September 17, the press officer added.

The numbers are not, so far, being updated in real time. “A reporting lag of at least one month is needed to allow sufficient time for accurate reporting of COVID-associated deaths,” the press officer wrote. However, the CDC has case, death, and vaccination data as current as 1 day ago on various pages under their data tracker.

The data come from 16 state health departments, representing 30% of the U.S. population. The CDC will update the numbers as more jurisdictions participate.

The CDC’s extra efforts to encourage vaccination come at a particularly trying time for public health officials, as they battle vaccination rates that were lower than expected, and the lowest of the G7 nations.

But will the new official stats make a big impact? Not likely, said Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. While he agreed that it’s a useful tool, “at this point, quite frankly, I don’t know how much more information people need that the vaccine is a way to keep you from being hospitalized or dying.”

“I’d like to know what percentage of people in the United States have heard of the CDC,” Offit said, “much less what their recommendations are regarding masking and vaccinating.”

The tool appeared on the CDC website the week of October 15, and a link to it can be found via the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.