1. You should feel reassured about the protection that you have. Dr. Michelle Prickett, who has worked in Northwestern’s COVID-19 intensive care unit throughout the pandemic, said the vaccines all work well. She said that for vaccinated people who are hospitalized, it is primarily vulnerable populations with less severe cases. Unvaccinated people are still coming in with very progressive respiratory failure and the COVID-19 pneumonia that was so dangerous last year and continues to be. She has not noticed one vaccine or another sticking out more among hospitalized patients. “The main point I would stress is people that are vaccinated do much better than people that are unvaccinated,” she said.
Dial Hewlett, head of the division of disease control at the Westchester County Department of Health and a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, noted that all vaccines are preventing severe disease and death; he noted that we are not seeing large numbers of hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated populations.
In short, all the vaccines are helpful. Before the delta variant began to spread, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 66% effective at preventing COVID-19, while Pfizer and Moderna were 95% and 94%, respectively, although all three were highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death.
“I think we can say without a doubt that all three of the vaccines have been effective against the delta variant, which has been the predominant string that’s been here in the U.S. for the last probably six weeks,” Hewlett said. New studies from the CDC showed unvaccinated people were 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die.
