Even unvaccinated residents of the Chattanooga region are experiencing reduced COVID-19 transmission thanks primarily to the vaccination of others. At the same time, they remain at higher risk for illness and contribute to the continued spread of the coronavirus, according to an analysis of county-level COVID-19 case and vaccination data.
In an effort to better understand how COVID-19 is impacting the region’s unvaccinated population, the Times Free Press calculated the seven-day average new daily case and new daily hospitalization rates for the 19 Tennessee and Georgia counties that comprise the Chattanooga region, home to roughly 1.2 million people.
The review covered early January – around the time that priority groups began receiving coronavirus vaccines – through the end of May, using publicly available state data.
Those rates were then recalculated by subtracting the portion of the population that had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, since the vaccinated population’s risk of contracting the coronavirus and being hospitalized is low.
To account for “breakthrough cases,” which are rare in fully vaccinated people and sometimes occur in partially vaccinated people, only 85% of the region’s vaccinated population, which amounted to 318,540 people as of May 31, was subtracted from the total population to form the “denominator” of the rate calculations.