Breakthrough Events, April 25, Part 2

The breakdown of breakthroughs by age group, more superb work by Dave Dixon.  Note again that we believe the state is undercounting events among the vaxed, which would skew these charts.  The numbers are too small to really reach a conclusion, but you can see that it appears that it was so important to vax adolescents because now those who got vaxed have at least as good a chance of being hospitalized as those who remained unvaxed.  The important charts to monitor are the ones that show the percent of the age group vaxed and the proportion of each kind of event in the vaxed population.  As the percent vaxed and proportion lines get closer together, vax effectiveness declines.  You can see that in every age group, protection against infection is basically zero and protection against hosp and death has declined, but is still good in the oldest group.

Dave’s notes:

• In the charts that follow there are 4 slides for each age group: cases, hospital admissions, and deaths for the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations each week, and a single chart showing the breakthrough proportions each week.
• New for the last few weeks is the addition of a curve on each chart showing the per cent of each age group that is fully vaccinated at the start of each week. Fully vaccinated is defined as completing their vaccination shots at least 14 days prior to the start of the week, but booster shots are not considered.
• Fig. 1 thru 4, 12-17 Age Group: Vaccinated cases exceed unvaccinated since 12/19/2021. Cases per week for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated are at very low rates. Vaccinated hospital admissions have exceeded unvaccinated admissions since 1/16/2022. I wouldn’t make too much of the 100% breakthrough proportion for Covid hospital admissions in Fig. 4, because there were only 3 Covid admissions in this age group for the week of 3/20/2022.
• Fig. 5 thru 8, 18-49 Age Group: Cases for this age group are trending very slightly upward among the fully vaccinated, as well as hospital admissions.
• Fig. 9 thru 12, 50-64 Age Group: Fully vaccinated cases and hospital admissions in this age group rose this week. Deaths remain very rare.
• Fig. 13 thru 16, 65 and Over Age Group: Cases and deaths among the vaccinated in this age group are increasing slightly, while hospital admissions among the vaccinated and unvaccinated continue to drop.
• The data source for all charts is the data file vbtcirates.xlsx, found on the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) web page: https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbtcirates.xlsx , updated 4/25/2022. This data file gives the rates per 100k of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in full vaccinated and not fully vaccinated people, broken out by age group. The rates per 100k in vbtcirates.xlsx are converted into cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by multiplying by the appropriate population. The number of vaccinated people by age group can found on the Vaccine Data page, https://mn.gov/covid19/vaccine/data/index.jsp , in the data file People Vaccinated by Age. The unvaccinated population is found by taking the US Census American Community Survey 5-Year Estimate (Data Table S0101, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table) and subtracting the vaccinated population. The breakthrough proportion is then found by dividing the breakthrough events by the total of the breakthrough and non-breakthrough weekly events.
• 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).