The Guardian view on vaccines and Omicron: upping the antibodies | Editorial

The best weapon against the new Covid variant is boosters. But ministers should take aim at misinformation too

It is by now fairly well known that the most serious cases of Covid-19 in the UK, and other rich countries, are increasingly concentrated among unvaccinated people. Between January and September, there were 34,474 deaths from Covid in England of unvaccinated people aged 10 or over, compared with 4,308 deaths of those who had received two vaccine doses (an alternative set of figures, also published by the Office for National Statistics and based on a different dataset, gives the totals of 40,966 unvaccinated deaths, compared with 5,104 double-vaccinated).

The UK Health Security Agency has been careful to stress that the data do not show causal links between vaccines and risks of mortality". Other differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups could contribute to their differing death rates. But the contrast is dramatic, as are data relating to hospitalisation, with one recent analysis showing that of 40,000 Covid patients hospitalised, 84% were unvaccinated and just 3% double-vaccinated.