Arizona "Breakthrough" Case Rate More Than Twice National Average

 

Now that we have large numbers of people vaccinated, epidemiologists are starting to get a good idea of what rate of "breakthrough" cases we can expect. Those are cases where people who have been fully vaccinated become infected anyway. Public health officials stress that vaccines aren't perfect and breakthrough cases are expected.

Here in Arizona, ADHS says there have been 271 cases. In the state we have 1,551,172 people fully vaccinated (according to Johns Hopkins).  That works out to a rate of 0.017% or one chance in 5,882 of being infected despite vaccination.  

Nationally, the rate is much lower.  CDC is reporting about 5600 cases among 70,811,070 vaccinated people. That works out to 0.008% or one chance in 12,500.

In both cases, many infections are asymptomatic. Of those that aren't, few require hospitalization, and deaths are rare.

Why the Arizona rate is more than twice the national rate is unknown and something ADHS should be looking into.  That said, the risk is not high, even here.

For comparison, the National Safety Council says you're more likely to be killed on a bicycle, by choking on food, by drowning, in a car crash, or in a fall, among other things.  And mind you, those are chances of death, which we're comparing to just getting a COVID-19 infection that would most likely be asymptomatic or mild.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay modified by Corona-zona 

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