COVID-19 seems to be everywhere right now. Many of us have a few (or many) fully vaccinated friends who have gotten sick recently, and the count of new cases is off the charts. Breakthrough infections are certainly much more common than they were before Omicron hit. But beneath this explosion of new infections is a stable trend, as my colleague Emily Barone explains: unvaccinated people are still overwhelmingly more likely to get very sick and end up in the hospital than people who are vaccinated.
“What we knew to be true during the Delta wave remains true today—that is, the unvaccinated population remain at higher risk of having severe symptoms, and many of them are indeed getting very sick to the point of needing hospital care,” Emily says.
To peek underneath the explosion of cases and arrive at that conclusion, Emily sorted through data one state at a time. Many states track hospitalization figures differently, and there’s a lag before the federal government reports the latest figures on whether hospitalized people are vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Here's a chart illustrating COVID-19 hospitalization data from New York state by vaccination status:
The data showed a consistent pattern across the country correlating hospitalizations with vaccination status, but it’s hard to know what information is missing because many states aren’t recording it. “Given this shift—that is, looking more closely at severe disease rather than cases—data is really important, and it's crazy that some states aren't really tracking it at all,” says Emily.
With shifting metrics, we’ll all need to start thinking about data in a smarter way. But the bottom line remains the same, according to the data: getting vaccinated and boosted is the most important step to protecting yourself from severe COVID-19.
More than 641 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon, of which more than 521.1 million doses have been administered, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 62.6% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 313.4 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and about 5.5 million people have died. On Jan. 11, there were more than 2.8 million new cases and 8,512 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 62.3 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 842,000 people have died. On Jan. 11, there were 752,047 new cases and 2,641 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Jan. 12, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
The U.S. will provide an additional 10 million free COVID-19 tests to all schools across the country each month in order to double the number of tests performed there, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on CBS today. The extra tests will start to be provided to schools as soon as next week, Cardona said. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure that our children have an opportunity to stay in school. That’s where they need to be, and we know we can do it safely.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized today for attending a garden party during a lockdown in May 2020, the New York Times reports. While Johnson said that the party didn’t break the government’s social mixing rules, he acknowledged the impact. “I know there are things we simply did not get right, and I must simply take responsibility,” Johnson said during a question-and-answer session. Ever since an invitation for the event first surfaced this week, Johnson has faced weakening support from within his party and calls from the opposition Labour Party to step down.
At least 301 U.S. police officers died from COVID-19 in 2021, making the disease the leading cause of death for people in this profession for the second year in a row, according to a report by the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund released yesterday. The figure is a 65% increase over this time last year. Although police officers are frequently exposed to COVID-19 in the line of duty, vaccine hesitancy has been a major challenge in many police departments across the country.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Tara Law and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
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