Breakthrough cases account for 30 percent of Minnesota’s COVID infections in August, according to data from the state’s department of health.
That is up significantly from 10 percent “in the weeks before June,” according to the Star Tribune.
The Minnesota Department of Health’s data revealed there have been 12,559 recorded breakthrough infections thus far, which represents 0.42 percent of the three million fully vaccinated Minnesotans. But it also represents two percent of all recorded COVID cases since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.
Out of 7,892 total deaths in Minnesota, 80 of them have been people who were fully vaccinated. That’s one percent of the total, with many of those 7,892 dying before the development of a vaccine.
Furthermore, nearly 6.5 percent of people with breakthrough cases were hospitalized, and approximately 0.6 percent of all breakthrough cases have ended in death.
“Many were [hospitalized] for other reasons and only discovered infections upon routine screening,” according to the Star Tribune.
Health officials continue to maintain, however, that the vaccines remain quite effective at preventing severe cases. Breakthrough COVID infections are not unexpected, they say, especially as variants emerge and the number of unvaccinated people without antibodies declines.
On Monday Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democrat who represents Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, used the health department’s data to erroneously claim in a since-deleted tweet that unvaccinated people represented 99.998 percent of Minnesota’s COVID deaths and 99.973 percent of COVID hospitalizations.
“Those are the facts,” he added. “Please use them to form your opinion.”
But those weren’t even close to the facts, hence the eventual deletion of the tweet. It appeared that Phillips simply misread the data, forgetting it was only taking into account Minnesotans who are fully vaccinated.
What the data actually says is that as of August 30, 99.973 percent of fully vaccinated Minnesotans have not been hospitalized, while 99.998 percent of them have not died.
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
