The Bay Area has the highest coronavirus vaccination rates in the state - and some of the lowest hospitalization levels

May 16—There's an emerging truth showing up at hospitals across California: The more vaccines in arms on the outside means fewer patients sick with COVID-19 on the inside.

And nowhere is that clearer than the Bay Area. The region's counties have the highest percentage of vaccinated residents in California and among the lowest hospitalization rates, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of state data.

"The vaccination rate is the gorilla in the room in terms of hospitalization rates," said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert and professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.

In Marin County, slightly more than 80% of the eligible population has received at least one vaccine dose — the highest rate in the state and well above California's statewide rate of about 59%. With the exception of Monterey and Solano counties on the outskirts of the Bay Area, the rest of the region's counties boast vaccination rates — the portion of the population that has received at least one dose — of at least 65%.

And the Bay Area has reached an all-time low for COVID hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic, with just 317 COVID patients as of Thursday, down 87% from the peak of 2,448 on Jan. 7.

Counties where vaccination rates remain stubbornly lower than average, like Yuba and Stanislaus, have hospitalization rates more than twice as high as Bay Area counties, the news organization's analysis found.

Climbing vaccination rates have made "an incredible difference," said Dr. Clifford Wang, a physician at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where the number of COVID patients has dropped dramatically and those who do end up there overwhelmingly "are the ones that are not vaccinated."

Wang said he occasionally sees people with COVID symptoms who have had one dose, but they usually do not need to be admitted. It's the same story at Stanford Health Care, where Dale Beatty is chief nursing officer and co-chair of the Vaccine Governance Committee.

"It's made a significant impact," Beatty said of the growing vaccination rate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully vaccinated adults 65 and up are 94% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19. According to state data, about 13.5 million Californians were fully vaccinated by May 5, and just one in 4,000 got the virus after being inoculated. Only about 150 were hospitalized and it's not clear that the virus was the primary reason.

"We're fortunate, in terms of our vaccination rate across the Bay Area, by and large, to have communities that are following the science," said Matt Willis, Marin County's public health officer, pointing out that the region was also the first to lock down when the virus first hit.

The Bay Area and urban parts of Southern California have vaccinated more of their residents, while rural Northern California has some of the lowest vaccination rates. The Central Valley and Greater Sacramento regions fall in the middle. In Santa Cruz County, for instance, more than 70% of eligible residents have had at least one shot and the 14-day average hospitalization rate is a mere .73 per 100,000 people. In Siskiyou County, where less than 42% of eligible residents have had at least one shot, the hospitalization rate is 19.18 per 100,000 people.

While desire for the vaccine has been strong in the Bay Area, with residents clamoring for shots before they became widely available, there has been more reluctance to get jabbed elsewhere — fueled by a mix of politics, nervousness about the safety of the vaccines and, in some cases, the belief that the pandemic is a hoax.

"I think there is probably a little higher vaccination hesitancy in our area," said Mechelle Perea-Ryan, director of the health science program in the School of Nursing at CSU Stanislaus. "I think it's a combination of all of those things."

In Perea-Ryan's county, roughly 50% of eligible residents have had at least one shot and the 14-day average for hospitalizations is 21.86 people per 100,000 residents — well north of the state average of 4.77.

In addition to vaccine hesitancy, Perea-Ryan said, county residents have higher rates of chronic diseases and conditions like asthma than the rest of the state, which can increase the need to hospitalize a coronavirus patient. And masking "hasn't been taken up as much as in the bigger cities."

Brent Powell, a professor of public health promotion at the university, said poverty, racial disparities and language barriers may also play a role. Marin County, by comparison, has higher income and education levels, with residents largely able to book appointments online and drive themselves to get a shot. Powell said the numbers in Stanislaus County also may be skewed somewhat by the fact that large hospitals in Modesto, the county seat, may draw patients from nearby rural counties like Calaveras and Tuolumne.

Neighboring counties are likely affecting the numbers in Placer County as well, said spokesperson Katie Combs Prichard, with residents from Sacramento County next door coming to Placer County hospitals.

Roughly 55% of eligible residents in the county have had at least one shot, and the hospitalization rate is 13.29 per 100,000 residents. But according to the county's own dashboard, fewer than half its hospitalizations are residents of Placer County.

Of all the counties where the vaccination rate is at or above the state average, just Alameda County has a higher than average hospitalization rate. An Alameda County spokesperson said the county had experienced a small "ripple" of cases in the spring.

"We have had difficulty getting below 60 hospitalizations at any point but case rates have resumed declining so that still may come," the spokesperson, Neetu Balram, said in an email.

Because of health privacy laws, the county could only say fewer than 10 who ended up in the hospital had been fully vaccinated.

Ultimately, public health experts agree the data is clear: more vaccinations mean fewer hospitalizations — a dose of hope amid a devastating pandemic, especially for frontline health care workers who have seen and risked it all.

"The word I would use is joy, pure joy," said Beatty of Stanford. "Release of the fear."