‘70% of county Covid patients not jabbed, says health boss
MORE than two out of every three hospital patients with Covid-19 in Derbyshire are unvaccinated against the virus, a health official claims.
In recent weeks there have been around 70 Covid positive patients in our hospitals, including at the Royal Derby, Chesterfield Royal and Queen’s in Burton.
To date, our hospitals have not disclosed the vaccination status of the Covid-19 inpatients, despite other health systems choosing to do so on a regular basis – showing the worth of the vaccines.
This week, Mike James, the clinical director at the Midland House vaccination centre in Derby city centre, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Everyone in the health system is talking about how many of the Covid patients being admitted to hospital are unvaccinated.
“70 per cent of the people being admitted are unvaccinated.”
The LDRS asked the University of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust and the Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to validate the 70 per cent figure.
Both organisations deferred to the Derby and Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which said it neither regularly collected nor validated the vaccination status of patients who have Covid-19.
It was asked for a formal statement as to why it was not regularly recorded, validated or published. The organisation has not provided a statement as of this article’s publication. Mr James also told the LDRS: “For people considering the booster or their first or second doses, I would say the evidence is very clear that the benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh the risk of Covid or risk of vaccination.
“I would be happy if everybody gets vaccinated.
“If we look at our hospitals, the case numbers are rising and the number of patients in with Covid is rising as well.
“The evidence shows there is a lower risk of serious illness if you have the vaccines and the booster can improve your immunity tenfold.
“There is a lot of disinformation being shared on social media, with some crazy ideas going out about the vaccine, and, bizarrely, some people choose to believe that instead of the information from the vaccination service.”
Public Health England data shows nearly three quarters of Covid hospital patients under 50 have not had a vaccine. It also showed an unvaccinated 30-to-39-year-old has a similar risk of serious illness from Covid as a vaccinated 70-to-79-year-old.
A study of Birmingham hospital data by Birmingham City Council found two thirds of people who needed critical care due to Covid-19 had not had both vaccine doses.
National data, endorsed by Sage and discussed by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) this week, shows that of the 40,000 Covid patients admitted to hospitals between December 2020 and July this year, 84 per cent were not vaccinated, while 13 per cent had received one vaccine and three per cent had received both doses.