Amid ongoing debate over vaccine mandates, legal challenges and booster shots, a new dashboard maintained by King County confirms vaccinated residents are significantly better protected from illness, hospitalization and death compared with their unvaccinated counterparts, even as the delta variant surges through the state.
Over the past 30 days, unvaccinated people were seven times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than vaccinated individuals, making up 69% of cases. Roughly 87% of hospitalizations comprised unvaccinated residents, a rate 49 times higher than the fully vaccinated population. And 72% of people who died from the coronavirus in the past 30 days were not fully vaccinated, making the likelihood of death 32 times higher if an individual has not been vaccinated.
King County says this data is a strong indicator of the vaccines’ success because it measures risk, or the rate of disease in the community. It updates daily and provides an analysis over the past 30 days or for 2021, as well as providing more granular population information.
Charts measuring COVID-19 between the two groups show a sharp, unrelenting increase in unvaccinated cases in Washington in August, while vaccinated cases peaked on August 10 before again declining. Over the last month, fully vaccinated cases never exceeded 13 cases per 100,000 residents, a high reached on Aug. 10, before again declining, while unvaccinated cases continued to climb through the month, topping at 90 cases per 100,000 people on Aug. 26.
