LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — While our hospitals continue to be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, we wanted to take a deeper look behind the numbers we give you daily.
Particularly, statistics about booster shots.
The numbers show that the extra shot of protection has a high success rate with keeping people out of the hospital.
While the eligibility and expansion of the booster shot has changed, one thing has stayed the same since its approval back in November-- the urge from health officials, like Dr. Jennifer Dillaha with the Arkansas Department of Health, to get a booster shot.
"I think it's going to be very important in order to bring this pandemic to a close," she said.
Doctors are finding out that the omicron variant has what they call a 'partial immune escape.' This basically means you need really high levels of antibodies to block it, so that's when the extra level of protection comes in handy, according to Dillaha.
"The booster dose increases the level of antibodies, so it's closer to what they were when you were first vaccinated," she said.
So, is the shot working? Let's look at the numbers.
According to the Department of Health, people who have received boosters have only made up 2.9% of the state's hospitalizations since Dec. 1.
People who were fully vaccinated but not boosted, represented 28.7%, while 68.3% of those hospitalized are not fully vaccinated.
"It's going to make a difference for a person to take that step, to get fully vaccinated and then get boosted," Dillaha said.
Dr. Amanda Novack said it's a similar trend throughout the Baptist Health System.
Only a small percentage of their COVID-hospitalized patients are boosted and she said most of them are older with other illnesses.
"These are not healthy people that got a booster dose. These are people that, many of whom kind of need to be in the hospital for other reasons, and happen to test positive," Novack said.
Right now, only 14.7% of the eligible population in our state is boosted according to the Department of Health.
It's a number that doctors want to see go up, according to Novack.
"Those little incremental things that we can do to be just a little bit more protected, actually make a big difference in keeping us from tipping over past capacity," she said.
It's a major difference in a fight that isn't over yet.
"We're at war with this virus and the virus has all these tools that it's using to bypass our immune system to spread more easily, to spread through the air, and so we need all the tools that we can get too," Novack said.
So, just as a reminder, if it's been 5-months since your last dose, those 5-years-old and older are eligible for the booster.
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