By RICHARD SKOLNIK
Los Alamos

The New Mexico Department of Health has just produced the first data that shows the rates of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths by vaccine status, including boosters.

This data is so important that I wanted to do a short note on it immediately for the Los Alamos community.

For the period Jan. 10 to Feb. 7, two comparisons are shown below.

Those people not fully vaccinated, compared to those people who are fully vaccinated but without a booster have:

Those not fully vaccinated, compared to those fully vaccinated with a booster have:

This data makes clear that “full vaccination” reduces your chance of getting infected, hospitalized, or dying. The data also highlights that getting boosted can even more significantly reduce your risk of infection, hospitalization, or death.

NM does not make data available to the public on the share of the population by county or zip code that has been “fully vaccinated, with a booster.” However, for New Mexico as a whole, The NM vaccine dashboard reports that only 42.9 percent of the population above age 18 have had a booster shot. 

If we want to keep infections to a minimum, return our hospitals to more normal functioning, and maintain an environment in which our kids can go to school safely, please get vaccinated and get boosted.

Editor’s Note: Richard Skolnik is the former regional director for health for South Asia at the World Bank. He was the director of an AIDS treatment program for Harvard and taught Global Health at the George Washington University and Yale. He is the author of Global Health 101, the instructor for Yale/Coursera’s Essentials of Global Health, and a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. Skolnik has written this article in his personal capacity.