Over 1,100 people in America have been hospitalized with COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated against the virus that causes it and over 220 have died, according to newly updated figures from a top U.S. health agency.
The number of hospitalizations among the fully vaccinated is up to 1,136 and the number of deaths among the same population is 223 as of May 10, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The statistics published by the CDC are an accumulation of reports from 46 U.S. states and territories, but those that are not sharing breakthrough hospitalization and death numbers is not clear.
However, the numbers could be undercounted because “national surveillance relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data might not be complete or representative,” according to the CDC.
Breakthrough metrics refer to cases, hospitalizations, or deaths among people who have seen two or more weeks elapse since receiving the final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine—the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine or the second shot of either the Moderna or Pfizer jab.
Of the people who died after being fully vaccinated, 42 were asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19, according to the CDC. Additionally, 342 of the hospitalizations were asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.
“Many, many hospitals are screening people for COVID when they come in, so not all of those 223 cases who had COVID actually died of COVID. They may have had mild disease, but died, for example, of a heart attack,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Under the usual counting program, people who have not been vaccinated but who die of heart attacks or other causes are typically listed as a COVID-19 death.
The death rate among the fully vaccinated is “extraordinarily low” when taking into consideration the death rate of COVID-19 itself, Walensky added.
Some 115 million people had been fully vaccinated as of May 10.
