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Onondaga County releases data: More vaccinated people ending up in hospitals this summer with Covid-19
Syracuse, N.Y. — The percentage of Covid-19 patients who had been fully vaccinated has climbed sharply in Syracuse hospitals this summer.
Numbers just released by Onondaga County show that while fully vaccinated people are still far less likely than the unvaccinated to be hospitalized, the gap has gotten smaller.
From March 1 to June 30, the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated were hospitalized at a rate 7 times higher than the fully vaccinated. In July and August, however, that rate had dropped by more than half: The unvaccinated were about 3 times more likely to be hospitalized during July and August.
The good news is that far fewer people overall are hospitalized now than in the winter despite a rapid rise in confirmed cases this summer. On Thursday, 68 Covid-19 patients were in Syracuse hospitals. At the peak of the winter surge, just as vaccines began to roll out, there were 336.
The county’s newly released data dates back to March. That month, the fully vaccinated made up just 4% of those hospitalized for Covid-19. By August, as the number of people who got their shots more than doubled and the highly contagious delta variant took hold, that rose to 36%.
Some of that rise can be explained simply because there were many more vaccinated people in August than in March. State data shows that by the end of March, just over 111,000 Onondaga County residents had been immunized. By the end of August, that number had more than doubled, to over 285,000. The number of fully vaccinated people admitted to the hospital, though, was 13 times higher in August than in March: six admissions in March vs. 78 in August.
But there’s more at work in the rise of fully vaccinated people getting sick enough to be hospitalized for Covid-19.
Experts say the rise in cases this summer is likely due to many factors, including the increased contagiousness of the delta variant, relaxation of prevention measures like mask-wearing, and waning immunity of the vaccines that has prompted plans for booster shots.
Onondaga County released the numbers Thursday afternoon just hours after Syracuse.com published a story about the refusal of the state and the county for weeks to make the data public. On Tuesday, county spokesman Justin Sayles had said the health department was digging through months of data and could not give a time frame when it might be released. Syracuse.com has requested the data only for the months of July and August.
A state Department of Health spokesman had also repeatedly refused Syracuse.com’s requests for data on hospitalizations among the vaccinated, saying only that “the information is not available.” In fact, hospitals around the state report Covid-19 data every day to a database accessed by the state health department. The department used the data last month when it published a study about the effectiveness of the vaccines.
Neighboring Cayuga County, with a sixth of the population of Onondaga, has been releasing hospitalizations by vaccine status since at least mid-July.
Nationwide, the numbers of fully vaccinated people who have been hospitalized is very low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the 171 million Americans who are fully vaccinated, only about 9,000 of them have ended up in the hospital for Covid-19. That’s about 5 one-thousandths of 1%.
A person is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their last shot in a series. For Moderna and Pfizer, that’s two shots; for Johnson & Johnson, it’s one shot.
The county’s newly released numbers show that 150 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized since March 1. More than half of those — 78 — were admitted just in August as caseloads climbed dramatically here and across the nation. With more than 285,000 county residents vaccinated, the number admitted to the hospital in August represents just 3 one-hundredths of 1% of the fully vaccinated.
Onondaga County’s data on hospitalizations doesn’t tell the whole story about the effectiveness of vaccines, however, including whether fully vaccinated have shorter hospital stays and need less-aggressive care than the unvaccinated.
McMahon also cautioned that since everyone admitted to the hospital is tested for Covid-19, some people could be lying in hospital beds with other illnesses or injuries but still counted as a Covid-19 case. He did not say how many of those cases there might be.
Since July 1, about 40% of confirmed positive cases of Covid-19 have been among the vaccinated. Experts say they’re not surprised by that; the vaccines were designed to keep people from getting sick, not from getting infected.
A state health department study from May to July found that the vaccines were up to 95% effective at preventing hospitalization, but their effectiveness against keeping people from catching the virus had dropped to about 80%. That study ended in July, however, before the dramatic rise in cases and the delta variant in August.
www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2021/09/onondaga-county-releases-data-more-vaccinated-people-ending-up-in-hospitals-this-summer-with-covid-19.html?e=143dd57e5e6b51fde7800bdaecb36465&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Coronavirus%20breaking&utm_term=Newsletter_coronavirusI bet the vaccine is not giving the long term protection as thought. Problem no one knows what long term protection means. They talk booster shots now at the 8 month vaccination date but if vaccinated people are ALREADY becoming infected before the 8 month date then earlier shot moght be needed more frequently. What if everyone HAD to receive a booster shot every six months for the next several years until this mutations stop!!! Bring chills.
