In this other child-aged group, also maybe a slight reduction in risk of infection or hospitalization by being vaxed.
Dave’s notes:
- 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.
- This post is an update to the 12-17 age group breakthrough charts most recently published on 9/9/2022 here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2022/09/09/breakthrough-events-september-8-ages-12-to-17/.
- 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.
- 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. For the most recent data point on 8/28/2022 the number of cases in the two groups are almost identical.
- 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 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.
- 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). For the week of 8/28/2022 64% of this age group was vaccinated (solid green line) while this group accounted for only 57% of the cases (dashed green line). The unvaccinated made up 36% of this group but accounted for 43% of the cases.
- 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 but over recent months the numbers of admissions have been very similar (Fig. 4). The admissions per 100k for the unvaccinated have been slightly higher than for the vaccinated in recent weeks (Fig. 5). Fig. 6 shows that admissions have been highly variable, not surprising given the relatively small numbers of admissions in this age group.
- 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.
- 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.