Reactions have been offered by some of our followers wondering why there isn’t more information on so-called “breakthrough” cases of COVID-19, and indicate that they feel this is important – and underreported.
Agencies like the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the National Centers for Disease Control tout vaccines as an important weapon in preventing serious illness and death from the coronavirus. Critics of vaccines point to the fact that vaccinated people are still being hospitalized – and dying – from the disease. So who’s right? Statistics can be found to support both points, but, as they say, the devil is in the details.
First, no vaccine is 100% effective, meaning that there will always be breakthrough cases…those infections that even fully vaccinated people experience. According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the CDC, those cases usually exhibit either mild illness or no symptoms and are often only known because a test comes in positive for COVID-19.
Second, hospitalizations of vaccinated persons do happen, but at a far lower frequency compared to the unvaccinated. Likewise, deaths of vaccinated persons have been reported but at an even lower rate.
The statistics on breakthrough infections aren’t reported daily as are other numbers related to the pandemic. The Wisconsin DHS updates its records on breakthrough infections each month on the 15th of the following month. That’s so it can account for the 2-week data lag in receiving COVID-19 reports and to ensure the most complete data from the previous month is received and accurate. The DHS also says that in order to more fairly compare rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among fully vaccinated and not-fully vaccinated groups, an age adjustment is done so that the overall rates are based on the same population proportions. The data doesn’t represent a running total, but rather only for the month being observed. But to offer more insight, we compared September and October figures, first for those fully vaccinated, and then for those unvaccinated.
The data for September indicates that breakthrough cases in fully-vaccinated persons happened at a rate of 513.3 cases per 100,000 persons…by October that number had decreased to 456.4. Hospitalizations per 100,000 among those fully vaccinated happened at a rate of 13.8 in the September data, while the October data showed that coming down to 12.2. As for deaths, September’s figures indicated a rate of 1.3 per 100,000 fully vaccinated persons, and October’s showed 1.8, up slightly. Now, a look at data from those unvaccinated is needed to give full perspective.
In September, COVID-19 occurred among the unvaccinated at a rate of 2,351.2 per 100,000 persons. In October that was down to 2,255.1. Hospitalizations went from 122.0 in September to 132.0 in October. And for the unvaccinated, deaths happened at a rate of 24.5 in September, and rose to 27.3 deaths per 100,000 persons in October.
To summarize, breakthrough cases do occur in those who are fully vaccinated, and some of those result in hospitalization and death. However, at least based on data averaged for the months of September and October in Wisconsin, unvaccinated persons were diagnosed at a rate 5 times higher than those who were vaccinated. Hospitalizations were 10 times more frequent among the non-vaccinated, and one who was unvaccinated was 17 times more likely to die after infection compared to one who was fully vaccinated. October’s data is presented by the Wisconsin DPH in the graphic below.
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