US sees no quick end to Omicron wave

RISKS FOR UNVACCINATED

Unvaccinated adults age 65 or older who contracted the coronavirus were 49 times more likely to require hospitalization than seniors who had received booster vaccine doses, according to new data from the CDC. Unimmunized adults in that age group were also 17 times more likely to be admitted to a hospital than those who had received either two shots of an mRNA vaccine or one Johnson & Johnson dose.

Meanwhile, unvaccinated people between 50 and 64 years old were 44 times more likely to need hospitalization compared with their boosted counterparts. "The CDC figures on boosters, drawn from between October and December 2021, provide a real-world snapshot of the efficacy of commonly used vaccines in the United States," reported The Washington Post on Friday.

As of Friday morning, a total of 82,450,772 COVID-19 booster doses have been administrated in the United States, or 39.3 percent of the fully vaccinated, according to the CDC's vaccination data tracker. Meanwhile, 209,842,610 people have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus in the country, accounting for 63.2 percent of its total population.