Allegheny County health official: Unvaccinated residents 10 times more likely to be hospitalized with covid

Unvaccinated residents in Allegheny County are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized with covid-19 than those who are vaccinated, and they’re 20 times as likely to die from the virus, county health director Dr. Debra Bogen said Wednesday.

Bogen, who has held briefings on the virus nearly every week since the pandemic began, sought to bring into focus the numbers surrounding breakthrough cases.

“With the delta variant, we have seen more breakthrough cases of covid-19, but I want to be clear that the percentage of breakthrough cases is not a reflection of how well the vaccines work,” she said.

A week earlier, the health department released the first hard numbers regarding breakthrough cases in the county — that is, cases that occur in someone who is fully vaccinated. The number of such cases has risen since June, when the highly contagious delta variant started to become the most prevalent strain of the virus.

Breakthrough cases were 23% of all cases in August.

Bogen said this week that, since June, there have been 2,600 cases among the more than 700,000 vaccinated residents. In the same time, there have been 12,500 cases among the 500,000 unvaccinated.

The unvaccinated, she said, are seven to eight times more likely to have a case of covid-19 than their vaccinated counterparts, and numbers since June show they are 10 times as likely to be hospitalized and 20 times as likely to die.

“To be clear, the vaccines are doing their job,” Bogen said. “They’re very effective. They help protect you from serious illness, hospitalization and death.”

And that, really, is the overarching goal of the vaccines, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert, said last week about the percentages.

“When it comes to what matters, the vaccines are holding up extremely well,” said Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The goal of the vaccines was not to prevent every breakthrough case but to make breakthrough cases very mild, to not cause serious illness, hospitalizations or death.”

The state Department of Health last week reported that 97% of covid deaths since January have been among unvaccinated people.

The data on breakthrough cases comes as Allegheny County once again is averaging close to 400 cases a day. As of Wednesday, 303 people in the county were hospitalized with the virus — the highest since Feb. 1. Nearly 300 new cases were reported Wednesday, along with six more deaths, all of which happened between Sept. 10 and Sept. 19.

Of the new cases Wednesday, 51 were among children 12 and younger — the age group not yet eligible for the vaccine. Twenty-two were 13 to 18 years old.

Bogen said there have been at least 1,600 cases among children 5 to 18 in September alone.

“Some cases are from school, some are from extracurricular activities, including sports and other activities,” she said. “Others report traveling and attending parties during their incubation period — so it’s really from many different sources, not just school.”

So far this month, 45 teachers also have reported contracting the virus. Bogen said the health department is monitoring five open school-related outbreaks and six open clusters.

Bogen said she does not believe this latest surge in cases has peaked.