Vaccinated people are now more likely to be hospitalized or die from Covid, even after adjusting for fact they’re older than the unvaccinated, according to official government estimates from the Canadian province of Manitoba.
In May, the most recent month for which figures are available, only 9 percent of Covid deaths and 14 percent of hospital admissions in Manitoba occurred among unvaccinated people, even though they are 17 percent of the population.
Manitoba, which has about 1.4 million residents, also provides figures that are adjusted for the fact that vaccinated and boosted people tend to be older.
Those show that in May, vaccinated but unboosted people were about 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized or die of Covid than unvaccinated people. People who had received boosters had roughly the same risk of hospitalization or death as the unvaccinated.
(Red is unvaccinated, green is vaccinated, blue is boosted. See how the green bar is higher? That means vaccinated people are more likely to die of Covid. Otherwise, everything is fine.)
These figures and estimates differ markedly from those the Centers for Disease Control have provided for American Covid deaths. But they are likely to be far more accurate. American hospitals and health authorities classify Covid deaths and hospitalizations as occurring in the unvaccinated until proven otherwise.
Countries with national health insurance can match their vaccination registries more easily against hospital admissions and deaths, and they have consistently shown much higher percentages of Covid deaths in vaccinated people.
Still, the data from Manitoba appear to mark the first time that any government agency has actually found a higher risk of death in vaccinated people.