COVID 40 Times More Likely to Kill Unvaccinated Texans, Study Suggests, As 54% Have Both Shots
Unvaccinated people in Texas are significantly more likely to become infected with COVID and die from it than the vaccinated, a new study from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) has reported.
The study, published yesterday, looked at data from around 1.5 million people who had tested positive with COVID between January 15 and October 1 this year, and compared those who were vaccinated to those who were unvaccinated.
It found that, throughout the entire study period, unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to experience "COVID-19-associated death" than fully vaccinated people.
It also found that unvaccinated people were 45 times more likely to have an infection with COVID than fully vaccinated people.
The data in the study was collected from three main sources: information on positive tests was gathered from the electronic laboratory reporting system; information on deaths was obtained from the vital records system; and vaccination information was obtained from the DSHS Immunization Registry.
In total, 1.3 million people in the dataset were unvaccinated, 184,732 were partially vaccinated and 46,321 were fully vaccinated.
The study found that the death rate per 100,000 people for all age groups combined was 463.7 in unvaccinated people compared to 11.6 in fully vaccinated people.
It also found that, for all age groups combined, the positive case rate per 100,000 was 14,196.6 in unvaccinated people, compared to 315.9 in the fully-vaccinated.
The study defined a COVID-associated death as a "confirmed
or probable case with no period of complete recovery between the illness and death."
"We have millions and millions of records that we had to go through for this analysis," said Dr. Jennifer Shuford, DSHS's chief epidemiologist, according to Texas news outlet WFAA.
"We're just not giving up and we know the benefits of these vaccines and how they can improve people's health."
Texas is in the lower half of states when it comes to the percentage of people fully vaccinated against COVID according to The New York Times' tally. It states that 54 percent of people there have had both shots.
This is less than the U.S. total, which The New York Times puts at 58 percent—equal to 432 million shots given.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of November 8, the U.S. as a whole has reported a total of 46,405,253 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, along with 752,196 deaths.
The seven-day moving average of daily new cases in the country is between 71,000 and 72,000.
