New government data shows that people who are not fully vaccinated are up to 30 times more likely than those who are to be admitted to intensive care with 'Clinical Covid'.

They're up to 14 times more likely to be admitted to hospital.

That's according to data based on the vaccine status of 88 patients, aged 40 and above, who were admitted to hospital with coronavirus between July 2021 and December 2021.

35% of them were admitted to ICU.

A patient was considered fully vaccinated if they had two doses plus two weeks at the time of admission.

Clinical Covid is where coronavirus is the primary reason for needing healthcare, rather than being admitted for another reason and then testing positive for Covid-19 on admission.

The dominant variant during this period was Delta. Omicron is likely to have become more prevalent in December.

The government says this report further emphasises the importance of vaccination to protect islanders from severe illness.

"Being able to publish this report while maintaining patient confidentiality has been extremely important. The purpose of the report is to answer how important the vaccine is in protecting Islanders from severe illness and being admitted to ICU.

As the number of patients data used in this report is sufficient, we have been able to publish a report which is balanced in terms of data quality, transparency and patient confidentiality.

The regularity of future updates on this will be based on how many patients have been admitted. When there is only a small number of cases this can lead to both unreliable information and the chance for small cohorts of patients to be easily identified." - Deputy Richard Renouf, Health Minister.

The government released another report earlier this month, which stated that unvaccinated people are roughly three times more likely to test positive for coronavirus than those who have had at least two jabs.

Deputy Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Ivan Muscat, says this report highlights how vaccination works to defend people against severe illness.

"The proportion of non-fully vaccinated Islanders (at the time of the study one dose or less) who were admitted with Clinical Covid is much higher than those who had been vaccinated with two or more doses; this shows that the relative risk of being admitted to hospital was between 3.5 to 14.4 times more likely if you only had one dose or are unvaccinated. And the risk of admission to ITU due to very severe infection in unvaccinated individuals is higher still.

I hope this report serves as another reminder as to why it is important to stay up to date with your vaccination schedule. Vaccination is working to prevent infection and severe illness and helps reduce the pressures on our critical services."

The latest government stats show that a third of 18 to 29-year-olds in Jersey have now had all three vaccine doses.