With so much attention on breakthrough COVID-19 infections lately, data help put into perspective how exceedingly unlikely it is for anyone who is fully vaccinated to end up in the hospital or die as a result of the coronavirus. Less than 0.004 percent of people fully vaccinated in the United States face hospitalization after a breakthrough case and less than 0.001 percent died from COVID-19, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data cited by CNN.
As of July 26, the CDC reported there were 6,239 COVID-19 hospitalizations among the fully vaccinated and 1,263 deaths. Almost three in four breakthrough cases occurred among adults who were 65 or older.
Data on breakthrough infections are a bit tricky because the CDC stopped monitoring it on May 1 and not every state collects and presents the information the same way. In an analysis of available state data, the Kaiser Family Foundation pointed out that not all hospitalizations and deaths among the fully vaccinated were actually due to COVID-19. Still, data from the states that do publish the information make clear what experts have long said, hospitalizations and deaths are extremely rare among the fully vaccinated. Breakthrough cases among the vaccinated is below 1 percent in all states and hospitalizations range from effectively zero to 0.06 percent. The rates of death from fully vaccinated people was even lower, clocking in at effectively zero in all but two of the reporting states.
A bit more than 58 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 12 has been fully vaccinated in the United States, according to CDC data.
