CDC Says Boosted People are 97 Times Less Likely to Die From Covid Than the Unvaxxed

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that people who are fully boosted are 97 times less likely to die from Covid than those who have not received a vaccine single dose.

The news was announced by CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky at a White House briefing on the pandemic.

She appeared with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Walensky opened the briefing by sharing numbers from the CDC from a week ago, which she paired with data she said her agency had recently collected.

“Last week, I shared data from our surveillance studies, demonstrating the effectiveness of vaccination, including boosters, on decreasing cases, emergency department visits and hospitalizations,” Walensky said. “Additional new data continue to support these findings.”

Walensky then shared data slides from from 25 jurisdictions collected during the first week of December.

“Looking at the data from the week ending Dec. 4, the number of average weekly deaths for those who were unvaccinated was 9.7 per 100,000 people, but only 0.7 per 100,000 people for those who were vaccinated,” she said. “This means the risk of dying from Covid-19 was 14 times higher for people who were unvaccinated, compared to those who received only a primary series.”

Walensky then announced that the CDC has conclusively found that being both vaccinated and boosted gives those who have contracted Covid the best chance at survival.

“For those who were boosted, the average of weekly deaths was 0.1 per 100,000 people meaning that unvaccinated individuals were 97 times more likely to die compared to those who were boosted,” said Walensky.

The CDC director did share some relative good news.

She said that “while cases have dramatically increased and are five times higher than they were during the Delta wave, hospitalizations have not increased at the same rate and deaths remain low in comparison to the case counts.”

You can watch Wednesday’s briefing in its entirety here.

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