Breakthrough Events, March 28, Part 1

Here is the latest version, based on Monday’s data release.  Trends remain the same, as the data reporting by DOH has now reached the end of the Omicron wave.  Most notably, and it may be a weekly artifact, but the proportions of deaths in the vaxed was over 70% and is likely similar to the proportion of fully vaxed persons in the population.

Dave’s notes:

1. Fig. 1: This table is the weekly announced cumulative breakthrough cases, hospital admissions, and deaths, as well as the weekly totals, and change in weekly totals, as published on the Vaccine Breakthrough Update web page https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html. New breakthrough cases announced on 3/28/2022 total just 1,864 cases, up slightly from 1,699 new breakthrough cases last week..
2. Fig. 2: This table displays the total breakthrough cases, hospital admissions, and deaths that occurred each week among the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. These numbers are taken from the vbtcounts.xlsx data file published by MDH on the Vaccine Breakthrough Update web page. We noted last week that we discovered an apparent discrepancy in MDH’s published data compared to a data we obtained through a Government Data Practices Act request. It appears that MDH has neglected to include 8,246 breakthrough cases in the weekly breakthrough case totals. MDH has not addressed our email notifying them of this issue, but we will keep a close watch on future data releases to see if the data is corrected.
3. Fig. 3: This chart simply plots the cases among the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations each week, as found in Fig. 2. Note that starting the week of 12/19/2021 cases are higher each week among the vaccinated. Note also that cases among the vaccinated appear to peak the week of 1/02/2022, and cases among the unvaccinated appear to peak a week later. It is not known if this is due to an actual epidemiological effect, or is an MDH reporting artifact.
4. Fig. 4: This chart displays the hospital admissions among the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations each week from the data in Fig. 2. The drop we see in both vaccinated and unvaccinated admissions in late 2021 is consistent with the overall drop in admissions we see in other MDH web pages.
5. Fig. 5: This chart displays the vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths each week from the data in Fig. 2.  Note that the deaths each week are roughly equal until November 2021, when unvaccinated deaths continue increasing while vaccinated deaths drop sharply. In early 2022 the deaths per week converge again. We don’t know if the divergence in late 2021 is a real epidemiological effect, or incomplete reporting from MDH during the Omicron surge in cases.
6. The table and charts are updated for new data released by Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) on 3/28/2022, adding data for the week starting 2/20/2022 and ending 2/26/2022.
7. The data source for the data on Fig. 1 is the cumulative breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths published on the MDH COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Weekly Update https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html
8. The data source for Fig. 2 is the data file https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbtcounts.xlsx found on MDH web page https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html. The data provided in the data file vbtcounts.xlsx is used without modification, other than to sum the weekly events and compute the breakthrough proportion. Vbtcounts.xlsx provides breakthrough and non-breakthrough cases, hospital admissions, and deaths for each week listed.
9. The charts in Fig. 3 through Fig. 6 are plots of the data in Fig. 2.
10. MDH defines a breakthrough event as a Covid case, hospital admission, or death that occurs 14 or more days after completing the vaccination series (not including boosters.