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Breakthrough Events, September 22, Age 65 and Over

By September 26, 2022Commentary

The good news about vaccine effectiveness is that among the very elderly, who are most at risk, there does appear to some limiting of infection risk, and good protection against hospitalization risk.

Dave’s notes:

  1. The following charts illustrate that for the 65 and over age group the vaccinated and boosted subgroup does appear to have a substantially lower risk of an individual testing positive, being hospitalized, or dying from Covid. In addition, the Vaccinated but not Boosted subgroup has lower rates of positive cases, hospital admissions, and deaths than the unvaccinated subgroup.
  2. This post is an update to the chart set for the 65 and older age group most recently published on 9/09/2022 here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/09/09/breakthrough-events-september-8-ages-65-and-over/.
  3. There are 9 charts in this set, 3 charts each for cases, hospital admissions, and deaths. 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 population.
  4. Fig. 1: This chart plots the cases in the 65 and over age group per week among the unvaccinated, vaccinated but not boosted, and vaccinated and boosted populations each week. Since the week of 12/26/2021 there have been significantly more cases each week among the boosted. We continue to note what appears to be data anomalies the weeks of 6/12/2022 and 8/07/2022, which has the appearance of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) failing to assign cases to the vaccinated or boosted subgroups, counting them mistakenly among the unvaccinated.
  5. Fig. 2: This chart displays the case rates per 100k for each subgroup in the 65+ age group.  Consistently through the pandemic the unvaccinated have the highest rate of cases per 100k, with the boosted having the lowest rates of cases per 100k.
  6. Fig. 3: This chart displays the proportion of the 65 and over population who are unvaccinated (solid purple), vaccinated but not boosted (solid blue), and vaccinated and boosted (solid gold). For each population group we also display the proportion of cases each week (dashed lines of same color). For the week of 8/28/2022, 85% of this age group was vaccinated and boosted (solid gold line) while this group accounted for only 70% of the cases (dashed gold line). The unvaccinated, for the week of 8/14/2022, made up 7% of the population but accounted for 18% of the cases.
  7. Fig. 4-6: These charts display the hospital admissions, hospital admission rates per 100k, and hospital admissions proportions for the 65+ age group, in an identical format to the case charts in Fig. 1 through Fig. 3. Similar to cases, the boosted have a majority of the admissions in recent months, and the vaccinated but not boosted have the smallest number of admissions (Fig. 4). The admissions per 100k for the unvaccinated are consistently highest, with the vaccinated being second highest, and the boosted having the lowest rates of admissions (Fig. 5). Fig. 6 shows that admissions among the unvaccinated have been disproportionately high throughout the pandemic. For the week of 8/28/2022 the unvaccinated made up 7% of the age group population but accounted for 25% of the age group admissions, while the boosted made up 85% of the population but accounted for only 58% of the admissions.
  8. Fig. 7-9: These charts display the deaths, deaths rates per 100k, and deaths proportions for the 65+ age group, in an identical format to the case charts in Fig. 1 through Fig. 3. Similar to cases, the boosted have had the greatest number of deaths each week since March of 2022 (Fig. 7). Fig. 8 shows that the boosted subgroup has had consistently lower rates of death per 100k, despite accounting for the highest number of deaths in recent months. Fig. 9 shows that deaths proportions are highly variable, but the proportions of death matched the proportion of vaccination for the week of 8/28/2022.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. MDH defines the boosted as those who have received any additional vaccination shots after completing their primary vaccination series, and also received the booster at least 14 days prior to testing positive. In addition, booster doses were only counted after 8/13/2021, the date the CDC first began recommending booster shots.

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