People who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 accounted for only 1% of all deaths involving coronavirus in England in the first half of this year, new figures show.
Most were infected before they had received both jabs, or had tested positive for COVID within 14 days of their second dose.
The figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the risk of death involving COVID is lower for people who receive two vaccinations compared to one or no dose.
Age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving #COVID19 are consistently lower for people who have received two vaccinations https://t.co/EkaAS1MNTT pic.twitter.com/3EpkfaNsOl — Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) September 13, 2021
Of the 51,281 deaths involving COVID in England between 2 January and 2 July, 640 (1.2%) were people who had received both vaccine doses.
This total includes people who had been infected before they were vaccinated.
The figures cover a period when fewer people had received two doses as the vaccination programme continued to be rolled out throughout the country.
Some 458 deaths (0.8%) were people who died at least 21 days after their second dose.
Just 256 deaths (0.5%) were people who were both fully vaccinated and who had their first positive PCR test at least 14 days after their second dose.
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A detailed breakdown of the data is available for 252 of the 256 people who died after having received both jabs and who first tested positive at least 14 days after the second dose - what the ONS describes as "breakthrough" deaths.
It shows that just over three-quarters of these deaths (76.6%) occurred in those who were clinically extremely vulnerable - a slightly higher proportion than for other COVID deaths (74.5%) and non-COVID deaths (69.7%).
Some 61.1% of breakthrough deaths occurred in males, which is higher than for other deaths involving COVID (52.2%) and non-COVID deaths (48.5%).
Analysis by Ed Conway, economics and data editor The lesson is that there is a clear mortality difference brought about by the vaccines. However, it’s worth being cautious with these data for a few reasons. First, they mostly reflect the previous variant, Alpha, which was dominant in the spring. Second, as of July, the gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated had narrowed. Fully vaccinated people still had a far lower age-adjusted mortality rate, but the gap is less dramatic than those headline figures might suggest. Even so, for those looking for evidence that the vaccines are protecting against death, the numbers are encouraging.
Julie Stanborough, deputy director of health and life events at the ONS, said: "Our new analysis shows that, sadly, there have been deaths of people involving COVID-19 despite them being fully vaccinated.
"However, we've also found that the risk of a death involving COVID-19 is much lower among people who are fully vaccinated than those who are unvaccinated or have only received one dose.
"This shows the effectiveness of the vaccines in giving a high degree of protection against severe illness and death."
wadoshnab on September 13rd, 2021 at 17:29 UTC »
You really want to look at the discrepancy between fully vaxxed and non-vax accounting for population size differences, and also for various factor affecting likelihood of death (age, gender, socio-economic level, etc). When we do this, what we get at the end is something like "on average, being fully vaccinated reduces the chances of death by X%".
Obviously people don't want understand that, so instead we go for metrics like this one. But I don't think that's necessarily a good strategy. Because you're confusing people. And 6 months from now, somebody will compute the numbers for the second half of 2021 and they'll find that the % of vaxxed covid deaths is now, I don't know, 10% - in any case, much higher than now, for obvious reasons. And in their confusion these people will ask, "how come the vaccine became 10 times less effective in 6 months? What's being hidden from us?" etc.
-V8- on September 13rd, 2021 at 15:26 UTC »
Im more interested in the 2nd half of 2021.
Musaks on September 13rd, 2021 at 13:40 UTC »
see, vaccinated people still die /s