COVID vaccine weekly: more vaccinated than unvaccinated Britons are now dying from the coronavirus

Coronavirus vaccines lessen the chance of you getting COVID-19 and massively reduce the risk of developing serious illness and being hospitalised. Yet at the same time, most COVID-19 deaths in England are now currently among the vaccinated. Is this a cause for alarm?

Put simply, no, says Kit Yates, senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath. No vaccines are 100% protective, so cases, hospitalisations and deaths are still to be somewhat expected among those who’ve been jabbed – and especially in those who are older.

This is because the risk of dying from COVID-19 increases so steeply with age that even being vaccinated doesn’t lower the risk for older people down to levels that some younger people experience. Due to their age, a vaccinated 70-year-old is still at greater risk from COVID-19 than an unvaccinated 35-year-old. Given this, it isn’t surprising that more vaccinated people are dying of COVID-19 than unvaccinated people.