* Are positive with a CT < 25
and
* Result in hospitalization or death
People who aren't vaccinated on the other hand are counted as being "sick" with COVID if they test positive with a CT < ~40+ (exact values vary by lab) and don't need to be hospitalized or have any symptoms at all. PCR cycle thresholds are exponents. Each cycle doubles the quantity of what you're looking for. Thus a positive at a CT of 40 is drastically different to a positive at a CT of 25. You could inject people with water and using this standard, you would see an enormous effect. Clearly this sort of thing is not sound science and will result in time series that show the CDC what it very much wants to see, rather than what's actually happening.
This type of distortion keeps happening with COVID related research, and it's resulted in me no longer trusting it (see [1] for more examples of what I've seen). Not a single figure or data point about this disease can be taken for granted because so often when the details are investigated, there turns out to be some ridiculous catch or unscientific practice being deployed. It's also not just random incompetence because it always seems to be working towards the same end: making COVID seem more dangerous and getting more people to take vaccines.