Indiana dashboard tracks vaccination status of hospitalized

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - An Indiana health care coalition has created a COVID-19 dashboard that tracks the number of vaccinated and unvaccinated people hospitalized in the state with the coronavirus.

The new dashboard by the Employers' Forum of Indiana compiles information from nearly 20 Indiana hospitals that have made public the breakdown of hospitalized patients who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, The Indianapolis Star reported.

The data has some limits, however, because fewer than 30% of Indiana's hospitals are participating and there's almost no data from central Indiana's hospitals.

But the data backs up what public health and medical experts have said all along: That the majority of people hospitalized for COVID-19 have not been vaccinated and the vast majority of those who end up in intensive care units and on a ventilator are also unvaccinated.

While COVID-19 cases are plummeting in Indiana after the omicron variant surge, the health care coalition's leader said that if cases start to rise again, the dashboard's information could sway some people who remain hesitant about getting vaccinated.

'Å“The question is, '~What is the point of being vaccinated.' The point is, while you still may get infected, you won't get sick," said Gloria Sachdev, the Employers' Forum of Indiana's president and CEO.

Health officials have continued to urge more COVID-19 vaccinations among Indiana residents because just 54.1% of the state's population is fully vaccinated, giving Indiana the nation's ninth-lowest vaccination rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.