Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung said in parliament earlier today (10 January) that there is a huge difference in the number of deaths between those who are vaccinated and those who are not.
He emphasized on the importance of vaccinations and booster shots and said: “In countries where Omicron has spread, the unvaccinated and under-vaccinated are still most prone to falling severely ill when infected.”
Ong was asked for a breakdown in the number of deaths and he said:
“There were 802 such deaths in 2021, of whom 555 were not fully vaccinated.
Although the unvaccinated is a small proportion of our population, they contributed to 70 per cent of the deaths in 2021.
The remaining 247 were vaccinated with a range of locally-available vaccines.”
There were 79 deaths per 100,000 people who were not fully vaccinated, 11 deaths per 100,000 for those vaccinated with Sinovac, 7.8 deaths per 100,000 for those vaccinated with Sinopharm, 6.2 deaths per 100,000 for those vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech, and 1 death per 100,000 for those vaccinated with Moderna.
Ong emphasized that the sample size doesn’t take into account other factors such as age or timing or vaccination and that the sample size is small (247 persons),
Ong further added that around 132,000 people above 18 remain unvaccinated, with about 300 being ineligible medically.
He highlighted that it was quite an achievement to have successfully vaccinated over 90% of every age group, especially the seniors.
He also updated parliament on the booster vaccine, describing it as gathering pace with about 46% of the population having been jabbed.