Report: Most dying of COVID had some vaccinations

The Washington Post

recently reported that an analysis conducted for the news-gathering organization showed that for the first time a majority of Americans dying of COVID-19 received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was quoted by the Post.

The explanation was that as vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. And, efficacy wanes, and many people did not keep up with the boosters.

Cox goes on in the Post

article to list these four reasons:

• At this point in the pandemic, a large majority of Americans have received at least their primary series of coronavirus vaccines, so it makes sense that vaccinated people are making up a greater share of fatalities.

• Individuals at greatest risk of dying from a coronavirus infection, such as the elderly, are also more likely to have received the shots.

• Vaccines lose potency against the virus over time and variants arise that are better able to resist the vaccines, so continued boosters are needed to continue to prevent illness and death.

• The BA.5 omicron subvariant became dominant in July and consistently accounted for the majority of new coronavirus infections across the United States until earlier this month. The highly transmissible strain fueled a surge of new infections, reinfections and hospitalizations throughout the summer.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health either stopped tracking cases, hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status or stopped providing it for public consumption — and the news media’s — for Delaware County and all of Pennsylvania in May. At the time, the percentages were rising in all categories.

Before the advent of the bivalent vaccines two months ago — designed to fight the BA. 4 and BA. 5 strains, which have already been nearly pushed out of the picture by their more vigorous cousins — the most up-to-date recommendations were a fourth booster or a fourth full shot for the immunocompromised.

Fewer than 10% of the population in Pennsylvania had taken the fourth and were up to date.

It’s almost two years since the first vaccinations were given.

The stats for the fourth shots and the bivalent boosters appear to be reliable. Older statistics such as for the totals in the oneshot category and the “fully vaccinated” column went through “cleanups” in 2021 to ditch duplications but not in 2022.

Also, the cumulative totals include all the people who have died along the way of any cause after getting a COVID vaccination. They are not purged from the totals.

So, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caps at 95% the vaccination participation rate for each age group each step of the way, lest the percentage shows more than 100% were vaccinated in an age group.

Using the CDC’s own figures for Delaware County:.

• 566,747: county population

• 95,000: estimate of the population of those age 65 and older, based on 16.8% of the total.

• 133,413: count of those 65 and older who received at least one dose of vaccine.

• 105,644: fully vaccinated 65 and older.

This week’s statistics

The COVID cases for the county were fairly flat for the week, with Pennsylvania seeing the first uptick in a month and the U.S. another uptick.

Hospitalizations remained fairly flat in the county and state, with deaths remaining elevated, though statewide down after the most in a week in the six-month second omicron surge.

Seven Delaware County residents died of COVID or with COVID as a contributing cause and were among 145 statewide. Last week, the county had four of the 194 deaths.

County residents are 1,985 of the state’s cumulative total of 48,271.

The total is based on residency, not where someone dies. Neither the Delaware County Health Department nor medical examiner’s office provide details about cases, hospitalizations or deaths within the county.

The initial omicron surge subsided in mid-February and the second surge, based on offshoots of the original omicron, began about two months later.

These are the latest COVID statistics from the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• 66.3 and 58.3, new case rates per 100,000 for Delco and the state, respectively

• 9.2% and 9.2%, positivity rates in the county and the state, respectively, up a tick in Delco and down four-tenths of a point in the state.

• 23 hospitalized with COVID in the county, a oneday snapshot, flat.

• 12 hospitalized per 100,000 population over the week in the county, which translates to about 65 new patients weekly, flat.

• 1,129 hospitalized with COVID in the state, nearly flat.

• 1,141 more county residents “fully vaccinated” for a total of 431,658 over the entire nearly two-year episode of inoculation opportunities.

• 5,465 more county residents receiving the new bivalent boosters for a total of 78,774.

• Moderate: COVID risk in Delaware County.

• 20%: Cases attributed nationally to the BA.5 spinoff of the omicron variant, continuing a decline.

• BQ.1 and BQ1.1 now make up nearly 60% of the cases in the U.S. and the mid-Atlantic. There are now 12 variants accounting for all the domestic cases.

• The first variant with a designation that does not start with “B” is also on the rise. XBB is at 3.% of the cases.

• 43,583 daily case average nationally in the past week, up 3,000 and a fifth week of modest increases.

The second omicron surge peaked at 129,889 on July 16. The low week of the year was in late March with a daily case average of 27,465. The low point after the pandemic got rolling in spring 2020 was 11,745 in June 2021.

In the past week, the San

Francisco Chronicle reported that the latest variants are rapidly spreading across California and that physicians at thta University of California at San Francisco have been asked to stop prescribing two monoclonal antibody treatments, Evusheld and bebtelovimab, for immunocompromised COVID patients because they are no longer effective against aggressive virus variants.

The flu season had gotten off to a roaring start in Pennsylvania and around the nation. The Pennsylvania Department of Health has had no new statistics since the week ending Nov. 5 and said, without comment, that it would not be providing new flu statistics until Nov. 30.

The county health department provides no statistics about the flu, though there is plenty of information about vaccinations of all kinds at its website.