These charts show why, despite breakthrough infections and milder symptoms overall, the Omicron variant is a major risk to the unvaccinated.
show that vaccines continue to offer protection against severe disease. And booster shots stand up to Omicron much like the initial vaccine regimens stood up to Delta. Anecdotal evidence and recent hospitalization data is proving this out.
On a national level, the hospitalization picture is incomplete, as not all states publicly track patient vaccination status, and those that do aren’t always consistent with each other and therefore can’t be compared side by side. For example, states account for partial vaccinations in different ways, and may exclude children from their analysis or only track hospitalizations in a select number of counties.
Other states report the ratio of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated status among currently hospitalized patients, as shown in the next chart: