Arizona health experts urge residents to get COVID-19 boosters

As the omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to surge following the holidays and amid a return to work or school environments for much of the Valley, local health experts are touting the importance of booster shots.

The most recent vaccine breakthrough infection report from the Arizona Department of Health Services reported that in November 2021, those who weren’t vaccinated were 31.1 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated group was also 4.9 times more likely to test positive for COVID-19.

That’s a big increase from October’s data, when the unvaccinated were just 15.2 times more likely to die from COVID-19 and 3.9 times more likely to get infected. The report attributed some of the shift to better efforts to reach fully vaccinated people as well as an overall increase in booster shots among the state’s population.