MORGANTOWN – Gov. Jim Justice’s last COVID briefing was Wednesday, and he won’t be back to renew his pleas to get vaccinated and to get vaccine boosters until Tuesday. In the meantime, here is a look at some of the numbers that are driving his and his team’s constant refrain.
Out of 290,909 COVID-19 cases in West Virginian since the start of the pandemic, 224,842 have occurred since the vaccines were first offered. Out of those 224,842 cases, 22,542 – 10.03% – have been breakthrough cases, meaning those people acquired COVID despite being vaccinated.
A constantly repeated message at the briefings, supported by data from Israel and around the world, is that the vaccines lose potency over time – the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines after six months, the Johnson & Johnson after just two months.
The point of that message, Justice and his team say every briefing, is that those age 18 and older who’ve been vaccinated need a booster to maintain their immunity.
A grim statistic on the dashboard is that there have been 349 breakthrough deaths. That’s only .038% of all the fully vaccinated people in the state as of Wednesday’s figures (the most recent available until Mondays update), which indicates the effectiveness of the vaccines, but also indicated the vaccinated aren’t invulnerable and need the boosters.
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh has said several times that data From Israel shows that the Pfizer booster – the primary vaccine there – lasts longer than the initial 2-shot vaccine, as long as nine months and possibly 10.
Out of 512 people hospitalized as of Wednesday, 123 were vaccinated, 24%; of 183 in ICUs, 31 were vaccinated, 16.9%; of 104 on ventilators, 14 were vaccinated, 13.5%.
The state has a population of 1,901,711 but only 894,747 have been fully vaccinated. That’s partly because not everyone has been eligible; the vaccines for ages 5-11 were only just recently approved.
Out of 1,062,917 people who’ve received one dose, 1,003,286 are age 18 and up; so just 59,631 younger residents have been vaccinated. Another breakdown: just 6.28% of ages 5-11 have had one dose, 37.8% of ages 12-18, 50.7% of ages 16-20.
In the early months of the pandemic, it was generally said kids don’t get COVID and when they do, they don’t see significant symptoms – although they could still spread it.
The Delta variant changed that. More kids got sick and a higher percentage were hospitalized.
Here are some numbers for the younger age groups in West Virginia. For ages 0-4, 6,196 acquired COVID; that’s 2.69% of all COVID cases in the state. For ages 5-11, 16,568 acquired COVID, 6.43% of all cases. For ages 12-15, 11,415 acquired COVID, 5.18% of all cases. There have been no reported deaths among these age groups.
For ages 16-20, the have been 19,136 cases, 2.52% of all cases, with two deaths.
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