This Chart Shows Just How Protected You Are Against Omicron Based on Doses

A chart published on Friday by the UK Health Security Agency

shows just how much protection people have against the Omicron variant of COVID-19 at each vaccine dose interval. Though there are more tools to deal with the COVID-19 spike now, Omicron has adeptly sidestepped vaccines and made cloth face masks a nearly useless tool of yester-year. (Seriously, upgrade your masks, people.) But it’s clear that a COVID-19 vaccine is still a powerful tool at preventing hospitalization and serious illness in vaccinated people. The handy-dandy chart, based on data collected between late November and late December of 2021, shows just how effective the vaccines are, at each dose (1st, 2nd, and booster), at preventing infection and severe illness from COVID-19. The data is based on all vaccines the UK offers — AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna — the latter two of which are being used as boosters in the country.

What the Chart Says About Hospitalization, Explained

If you’ve just had one dose of the vaccine, per Business Insider, the chart shows that you’re 52 percent less likely to be hospitalized by symptomatic COVID-19 than if you’ve had zero doses. If you have finished the two-dose course, you are 72 percent less likely to be hospitalized within the 2-24 weeks following that second dose. After 24 weeks of the second dose, you’re 52 percent less likely to be hospitalized. If you’re two weeks out from your booster, your risk of hospitalization is 88 percent lower than if you had been unvaccinated.

your protection from the vaccines against symptomatic disease is not as ironclad.

What the Chart Says About Symptomatic Illness, Explained

Just one dose gives you about a 25 percent reduction in risk of getting symptomatic COVID-19 within a month of vaccination, according to an analysis of the data from Business Insider. Within 2-24 weeks of the second dose, there is an 18 percent reduction of symptomatic illness from Omicron; past 24 weeks since your second dose, you have just a 2 percent reduced chance of getting symptomatic COVID-19. The good news is that if you’re boosted, your risk of being symptomatically sick from Omicron drops by 63 percent — proving that boosters are a truly effective way to prevent COVID-19. However, it’s unclear how long protection against illness and hospitalization from boosters will last.

In Case You Need to Know More…

Although the COVID-19 vaccine provides protection from symptomatic and illness and hospitalization, it’s crucial to be cautious if you’ve been exposed. With all the new confusing rules about quarantine times, here’s a tool that will tell you exactly how to proceed.

And if you have a kid in school right now, this is what you need to know about the CDC’s new policy recommendation that would keep children in school even if they’ve been exposed to COVID-19.