Researchers find a “positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Researchers—including two from Harvard—published a piece in the European Journal of Epidemiology concluding that there is a “marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”
- The researchers investigated “the relationship between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases across 68 countries and across 2947 counties in the US.”
- They found: “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days.”
- “In fact,” they go on to report, “the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”
- The researchers also pointed to Israel, while the country is “hailed for its swift and high rates of vaccination” rates, it “has also seen a substantial resurgence in COVID-19 cases.”
- Researchers also singled out Iceland and Portugal, both countries having “over 75% of their population fully vaccinated,” and yet both countries have “more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated.”
- The authors conclude that the “sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined,” and that “even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated, it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatizing populations can do more harm than good.”
CDC IDENTIFIES MOST VACCINATED U.S. COUNTIES HAVE “HIGH” COVID INFECTION RATE:
The study author’s note: “Of the top 5 counties that have the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9–84.3%), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies 4 of them as “High” Transmission counties.”
“Chattahoochee (Georgia), McKinley (New Mexico), and Arecibo (Puerto Rico) counties have above 90% of their population fully vaccinated with all three being classified as “High” transmission,” they go on to say.
LEAST VACCINATED U.S. COUNTIES HAVE LOW COVID INFECTION RATE:
“Conversely, of the 57 counties that have been classified as “low” transmission counties by the CDC, 26.3% (15) have percentage of population fully vaccinated below 20%,” researchers note.
BACKGROUND:
- The researchers emphasized how vaccines are currently the “primary mitigation strategy” that world governments are using to “combat COVID-19 around the world.”
- They observe that “the narrative related to the ongoing surge of new cases in the United States (US) is argued to be driven by areas with low vaccination rates,” with a “similar narrative” seen in “Germany and the United Kingdom.”
- The researchers’ findings contradict this narrative.
- The European Journal of Epidemiology is a peer-reviewed journal “dedicated to all fields of epidemiologic research and to epidemiologic and statistical methods,” according to the organiztion’s website.
