Breakthrough Events, Ages 12 to 17

Dave’s notes:

1. The following charts illustrate, for the 12-17 year old age group, that being vaccinated appears to offer minimal protection for testing positive for Covid in the most recent weeks’ data available, but the vaccinated have a slightly lower rate of hospital admissions compared to the unvaccinated. The Minnesota Department of Health does not publish breakthrough death data or booster data for the 12-17 age group.
2. This post is an update to the 12-17 age group breakthrough charts most recently published on 7/25/2022 here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/07/25/breakthrough-events-july-21-ages-12-to-17/.
3. There are 6 charts in this set, 3 charts each for cases and hospital admissions. Each set of 3 charts consists of the actual events per week (cases, admissions, or deaths); the rate per 100k each week, and the proportion of events compared to the proportion of the vaccinated or unvaccinated population.
4. Fig. 1: This chart plots the cases in the 12-17 age group per week among the unvaccinated and vaccinated but not boosted populations each week. Since the week of 12/19/2021 there have generally been more cases each week among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.
5. Fig. 2: This chart displays the case rates per 100k for each subgroup in the 12-17 age group. The rates for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated have been almost identical basically since 1/16/2022, supporting the idea that there is minimal benefit of vaccination for this age group.
6. Fig. 3: This chart displays the proportion of the 12-17 population who are unvaccinated (solid blue) and vaccinated but not boosted (solid green). For each population group we also display the proportion of cases each week (dashed lines of same color). The way to interpret this chart is to compare the proportion of breakthroughs to the proportion of vaccinations for each group. Whenever the dashed breakthrough proportion line is below the solid vaccination line of the same color, then that category is underrepresented for population, and that vaccination status might be said to be beneficial (ignoring for now other confounding factors). For the week of 7/17/2022, the most recent week that we have data for, 64% of this age group was vaccinated (solid green line) while this group accounted for 61% of the cases (dashed green line). We would interpret this to show that being vaccinated very slightly reduced an individual’s chances of testing positive for Covid for that week.
7. Fig. 4-6: These charts display the hospital admissions, hospital admission rates per 100k, and hospital admissions proportions for the 12-17 age group, in an identical format to the case charts in Fig. 1 through Fig. 3. The unvaccinated have made up the higher number of admissions in the most recent data point (Fig. 4, 4 admissions the week of 7/17/2022 vs. 1 admissions vaccinated). The admissions per 100k for the unvaccinated is slightly higher than the rates per 100k for the vaccinated for the 7/17/2022 (Fig. 5). Fig. 6 shows that admissions have been highly variable, not surprising given the relatively small numbers of admissions in this age group.
8. All data is obtained from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Vaccine Breakthrough Weekly Update web site https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html. A data file on this site, vbtadultcirates.xlsx, contains all of the age group data.
9. MDH defines the fully vaccinated (what we have termed vaccinated but not boosted) as those who have not received a booster after completing their primary vaccination series, and had been vaccinated at least 14 days prior to testing positive.