Unvaccinated patients died twice as often as those vaccinated during the latest wave of COVID-19–ScienceDaily

The latest research by the University of Cincinnati, published in the journal Medical frontier, It reveals a significant disparity in healthcare between urban and rural areas of the United States.

“This new national survey looking back at the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19 demonstrates the power and usefulness of geospatial and data visualization analysis,” said James L. Winkle, former Dean of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC. Co-author Neil McKinnon said. , Currently President of Augusta University.

“We hope this information will help decision makers in approaches to dealing with future public health campaigns and pandemics.”

The United States was hit by the fourth and most severe wave of the COVID-19 pandemic through a variant known as Omicron that infected even many of the vaccinated people. Researchers relied on data from 2,417 counties to track the incidence of cases from 1 December 2021 to 31 January 2022 and the mortality rate per 100,000 people.

They found that counties with a vaccination rate of less than 40% showed much higher mortality rates than counties with a vaccination rate of 60% or higher. This study recommended that health policy makers continue to prioritize vaccination coverage.

“Omicron spread crazy. The daily peak of Omicron infection was three times the peak of Delta,” said Diego Quadros, lead author of the study and director of UC’s Digital Epidemiology Institute. I am saying.

The epicenters of the Omicron wave were concentrated in densely populated urban counties. However, while the number of cases increased explosively, the infection did not result in the same dire mortality and hospitalization rates as previous variants such as Delta, Cuadros said.

“Delta was less infectious than Omicron, but deadly,” Cuadros said.

Despite the lower overall mortality rate of patients infected with Omicron compared to previous variants, unvaccinated people can die from COVID-19 more than twice as much as vaccinated patients There was sex. The researchers concluded that the vaccine makes a significant difference in patient outcomes, despite the large number of breakthrough cases of Omicron among vaccinated patients. As a result, low-vaccination areas in mostly rural countries continue to bear the highest health burden of pandemics.

Researchers are also concerned that rural areas of the United States face unbalanced long-term effects from chronic or protracted symptoms known as long-term COVID-19.

Co-author Claudia Moreno, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington, said:

Meanwhile, as fewer people report new cases, their ability to track illnesses diminishes, making it harder for the community to assess their daily risk, Moreno said.

“In the early days of the pandemic, people knew exactly what the infection rate in their county was every day, like the weather,” Moreno said. “And now there is a peak when the load is very high, but the general perception is low.”

The rural population is old and vulnerable to COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths. In rural areas of the United States, fewer doctors are needed to treat complications from COVID-19 infection, and access to intensive care units and ventilators is also reduced.

“Rural communities often face many challenges that exacerbate national health inequalities,” the study concludes. “These areas usually lack resources such as limited cold chain vaccine storage facilities and health care workers to administer vaccines. Geographically, access gaps have worsened and vaccines are given to residents who live for miles. May affect local clinics facing the unique challenge of providing a vaccine. “Over there.”

Moreno said many people, including himself, knew who died of COVID-19. Her cousin’s husband, a basketball coach, died despite his seemingly healthy health.

“It was devastating to my family,” she said. “That’s why my research has a personal motivation to help the community. You wouldn’t want more families to experience that unnecessary pain.

“Many of us are again infected with COVID, which is mild,” Moreno said. “But we need to remember those who died of this disease.”

Researchers say vaccination remains a top priority to protect people as the pandemic continues.

“That’s why it’s important to tell people that you need to be vaccinated,” Moreno said. “Vaccines work. Vaccines really help people prevent death and health complications.”

Cuadros said the inequality observed in the study had an impact far beyond the pandemic.

“COVID-19 has revealed all of these hidden problems in our healthcare system,” Cuadros said.

He has studied the effects of diseases such as AIDS and malaria in developing countries around the world. He said easy access to healthcare makes all the difference.

“We consider the United States to be a rich country with good health care, but that’s not true,” he said. “It is powerful in some areas and vulnerable to poor access to health care in others.

“The disparities in rural areas with limited access to health care are invisible, but the pandemic has exposed these problems,” he said. “Now that we know about these issues, we can fix them and take action to promote access to more health care in those vulnerable counties.

“From chronic illness to opioid addiction, all these problems will be hit harder in the same rural area,” said Cuadros. “We need to discuss how to solve this problem, because we will be dealing with it over the years to come.”