Breakthrough Events, September 8, 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, and also minimum protection from hospital admissions for Covid compared to the unvaccinated, at least since Feb. 2022. 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 8/16/2022 here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/08/16/breakthrough-events-ages-12-to-17-3/.
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. Note, however, that the week of 8/7/22 there appears to be a data anomaly where there were more unvaccinated cases than vaccinated cases, the only time this has occurred in 2022. This spike in unvaccinated cases then reverted to trend lower than vaccinated cases the week of 8/14/2022.
5. Fig. 2: This chart displays the case rates per 100k for each subgroup in the 12-17 age group. The case rates for the unvaccinated have been trending slightly higher than the case rates for the vaccinated since 7/10/2022, even before the anomalous spike in unvaccinated cases 8/7/22. However, except for 8/7/22, the difference in case rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is minimal.
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 8/14/2022, the most recent week that we have data for, 64% of this age group was vaccinated (solid green line) while this group accounted for only 58% 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 vaccinated have made up the higher number of admissions in the most recent data point (Fig. 4, 2 vaccinated admissions the week of 8/14/2022 vs. 1 admissions unvaccinated). The admissions per 100k for the unvaccinated and vaccinated are virtually identical for the week of 8/14/22 (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.