Hospitals say vast majority of patients are unvaccinated
As Connecticut’s COVID-19 numbers begin to tick upward again, hospital officials say the overwhelming majority of patients they treat for COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
“This is no longer a pandemic of the people, this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, an infectious disease specialist at Hartford Healthcare, echoing a phrase used last week by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky. “It is that clear of a distinction.”
Wu said he did not have a precise breakdown of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated patients in Hartford Healthcare facilities but that most patients with severe COVID-19 have not gotten their shots. Similarly, a spokesperson for Yale New Haven Hospital said precise vaccinated vs. unvaccinated data was not available but that “admissions
are highly dominated by nonvaccinated patients.”
Dr. David Banach, an epidemiologist at Uconn Health, said he is not aware of any vaccinated patients the hospital has treated for COVID-19 in recent weeks.
“It’s really primarily non-fully vaccinated patients who are being admitted to the hospital,” he said.
The state Department of Public Health has not released data on cases, hospitalizations and deaths broken down by vaccine status since early May, and a spokesperson said Tuesday that those numbers would take several days to prepare.
On May 7, when the state last shared data about “breakthrough” infection, there had been only 242 confirmed cases among more than 1.4 million Connecticut residents who had been vaccinated. The issue has drawn attention again, however, due to the spread of the Delta variant, which has been shown to be more resistant to vaccines than other strains.
Wu noted Monday that vacci
nated people may test positive for COVID-19 but are highly unlikely to have serious symptoms and require hospitalization.
“Vaccinated people are still going to get the disease,” Wu said. “The whole point of the vaccine is to turn [COVID-19] into the common cold, and that’s what it’s doing. Those who are getting the vaccine, some of them are certainly getting cases of it, but by and large they’re not getting hospitalized or dying from it.”
Connecticut currently has 58 patients hospitalized with COVID19, according to state numbers, up from 25 less than two weeks ago but still far below most points during the pandemic.
Research from other places affected by the delta variant suggests more cases of vaccinated people getting COVID-19 are likely coming. In Israel, for example, the Ministry of Health has observed a “marked decline” in the effectiveness of the Pfizer-biontech vaccine in preventing both infection and symptomatic infection. And a new study from New York University, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that the Johnson & Johnson is far less effective against the delta variant than against other strains.
In Massachusetts, breakthrough infections represented 43.4% of all new cases from July 10-16, according to the state’s Department of Public Health, though hospitalizations and deaths have not increased accordingly — a sign that vaccines are preventing serious illness.
Experts note that in a population where most people are vaccinated, breakthrough infections will inevitably make up a substantial share of all cases. They also emphasize that an increase in breakthrough cases does not mean vaccination doesn’t work or that people should not get vaccinated, only that vaccinated people still face some risk of infection.
Connecticut’s COVID19 positivity rate has increased notably in recent weeks, from a seven-day average as low as 0.4% to as high as 1.5%. The number of new cases has increased as well, from about 50 a day earlier this month to about 150 a day over the last week.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Connecticut has increased as well, though not as steeply. As of Monday, the state had 54 people hospitalized, up from earlier this month but still down dramatically from most other points during the pandemic.
Experts say Connecticut’s relatively high rate of vaccination — more than 80% of adults have received at least one shot — could protect the state from the type of full-on surge experienced elsewhere in the country and the world.
Still, with more than a million Connecticut residents still unvaccinated, COVID-19 still has room to spread.
And the more the disease spreads, Wu said, the greater the chance of further mutations that pose even greater threats than the Delta variant.
“We have such a large part of [the population] unvaccinated that the virus could mutate again and then all of a sudden the vaccines that we were using may not work with the new variant,” Wu said. “However, if those unvaccinated would just get vaccinated and we would prevent the spread and the replication of it, then that would definitely lead to less chances of mutations happening.”