Although the highly contagious Omicron variant is responsible for breakthrough cases in San Diego health officials say an analysis of recent deaths from COVID still show vaccination and booster shots are the best defense joining me as San Diego union Tribune health reporter Paul Sissen.
Uh, isn’t nearly as high as we saw last year when coronavirus was really causing a lot more severe lung problems. I actually did a little bit of analysis of, of how many people had died each day.
I think it’s important also to note that the vote is still out on that we still have over 1300 people in our local hospitals who have tested co positive for, uh, for coronavirus and, and are fighting COVID 19 as we speak, you know, and will often fight for weeks in hospitals.
And, and I’m, I’m a little cloudy on exactly all the tiny details of that process, but I guess sometimes it can just take them a while to, uh, decide for sure whether or not they want to put any given death on, on the list of those that they can consider to be COVID related.
I, I went through and, uh, and looked at these 113 deaths and, uh, the average age there is 74, all, but two of these, uh, latest 113 had other underlying health problems present, uh, besides COVID tragically.
Sadly, we do not get granular information from the county on each person who died and whether or not they were vaccinated.
Well, the recommendation that a booster is the still the best protection for a fully vaccinated person.
Hood, um, is a, a very well known physician, uh, in many parts of San Diego, especially, uh, serving San Diego’s black community, which has a, uh, you know, throughout the pandemic through this last year, when the vaccine has been available, it has been, uh, more reluctant to get vaccinated.
I think if you look, uh, at the cases, by the dates that people got sick, rather than by the, uh, dates that those cases were announced to the public, uh, you can see a pretty solid trend.
Hospitalizations and deaths are considered a lagging factor, so the above-average deaths due to the virus may be a result of the Omicron spike in December and January.
“It’s important to note that lab-confirmed cases currently only make up a portion of the actual cases in the region, as more and more people rely on home antigen tests,” said Dr.
According to the latest state data, the county’s hospitalizations from the virus decreased by 24 to 1,105.
“There is a common misconception that the Omicron variant is not as deadly as prior strains of COVID-19,” Wooten said.
A total of 1,072,823 of San Diego County residents who are fully vaccinated have received a booster shot, according to the HHSA.