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Oregon’s indoor mask mandate was lifted on Saturday for most public places (excluding health care facilities), which means less protection against contracting COVID-19 in certain conditions.
In a review of current medical literature, Asante’s top clinical leaders reported that immunization against COVID-19 remains the most effective way to reduce susceptibility, transmission, hospitalization and death from the disease.
The review was done by Chief Medical Officer Jamie Grebosky, MD; vice presidents of Medical Affairs Somnath Ghosh, MD, Eric Loeliger, MD, and Steve Hersch, MD; Infectious Disease medical director Kirsten Schutte, MD; and Holly Nickerson, vice president of Quality and Patient Safety. Their key findings:
- People who were unvaccinated had a greater risk of testing positive, being hospitalized and dying of COVID-19 than people who were fully vaccinated.
- Vaccines reduce rates of transmission for all variants.
- Unvaccinated people in all age groups had higher case and death rates than fully vaccinated people in the same age groups.
- Case and death rates for people fully vaccinated with any of the three vaccine types (Moderna, Pfizer/Comirnaty, Johnson & Johnson) were much lower than for unvaccinated people.
- People who were fully vaccinated with an additional or booster dose had lower case rates compared with those without an additional or booster dose. Both of these groups had much lower risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with people who were unvaccinated.
- People ages 65 and older had a larger overall benefit from receiving an additional or booster dose, compared with younger age groups.
The group’s findings have been simplified into an infographic. Feel free to download and post in employees areas.
If you have a question, please contact the author or relevant department directly.
