How unvaccinated people are far more likely to be hospitalised by Covid-19

An unvaccinated 80-year-old is five times more likely to be hospitalised than a vaccinated one.

When the world was first alerted to the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on 24 November, the great fear was that its armoury of vaccines would no longer be effective. The variant has an unusually large number of mutations, a significant number of which affect the spike protein targeted by most vaccines.

But data from the latest Covid-19 vaccine surveillance report shows that over the four weeks to 12 December – the latter half of which coincided with Omicron’s rapid spread – vaccines have continued to offer significant protection against hospitalisation. For the age group 80 and older, the rate of hospitalisation was 181 hospital admissions per 100,000 unvaccinated individuals, compared to just 37 for vaccinated individuals.