COVID Death Toll Mounts, Including Vaccinated Persons

Melissa Diaz-Musa

The mortality rate for persons who have been fully vaccinated is also on the rise, but not as fast as it is for persons who are unvaccinated.  While the total number of COVID casualties stands at four hundred and two, only eight persons who were fully vaccinated have succumbed to the deadly virus.  According to Dr. Diaz-Musa, recent data shows that those individuals were often over the age of sixty and had existing co-morbidities.

Dr. Melissa Diaz-Musa, Deputy Regional Health Manager, Central Health Region

“When you look at the data with regards to persons who have died as a direct result of COVID-19, we look from April to currently. We would see that there is a continuous increase. So in April and May there are two and three deaths, in June, four, July it went up to eight and that’s when we started to see more and more spread. In August, we were up to twenty-four deaths and of that, twenty-one were unvaccinated, one with a first dose and two fully vaccinated. And in September, so far, we’re at September twenty-fourth and we have had thirty-seven deaths so far, twenty-six of whom were unvaccinated, four with one dose only and eight persons fully vaccinated. So looking at the total, of the ten persons who have died that were fully vaccinated, over the total amount of deaths from April to now, we said okay, we actually got through the second wave that we were in.  It’s about twelve percent, we’re averaging around twelve point one percent for deaths, but for these eight persons the age factor is there, that everybody, I think, out of the ten, eight were over sixty and two were over fifty-five. So you’re looking at age as a significant factor and there are many things that may contribute to morbidity and mortality, for how unwell you feel, how your immune system reacts and what causes somebody to die from COVID-19. So of course the COVID-19 vaccine, we do know that that significantly helps to reduce hospitalization and death, but also you’ve got to look at factors like age, co-morbidities, whether persons are well controlled with diabetes and high blood pressure. Many of the persons who have died had cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and asthma. So these are the co-morbidities that persons who have died also have.”