These charts show how much more often unvaccinated Albertans are being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19
CBC
Recent rates of hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and death among unvaccinated Albertans have been at least eight times higher — and as much as 60 times higher — compared to the fully vaccinated population, depending on which age range you look at.
That's according to a new CBC News analysis of data published by the provincial government.
Data experts with Alberta Health reviewed the analysis and confirmed the methodology as an effective way to compare severe outcomes relative to both vaccination status and age — while also accounting for the population sizes of each group.
These types of comparisons can be tricky, because the risk of severe outcomes increases with age, but so too does the rate of vaccination. As such, population-wide comparisons don't tell the full story.
For example, it's often reported that unvaccinated Albertans make up just 32 per cent of the population but a whopping 74 per cent of the COVID-19 patients in hospital. But this actually under-represents the risk for unvaccinated adults, because a huge proportion of the unvaccinated population is made up of children who are both ineligible for the vaccine and unlikely to end up in hospital.
Breaking the data down by age helps to better understand how things compare among the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated.
"Age, in particular, really controls a few outcomes here in the province," said Dr. Craig Jenne, a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary.
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