Some very surprising news from PHE Technical Briefings which show that the vaccine breakthrough rate in England has increased dramatically over the last 5 weeks, and worse, that the mortality rate for the fully vaccinated cases is proportionally far worse than the mortality rate for the unvaccinated, and that that proportion is also increasing.
We are highlighting the key parts of the PHE documents here, along with a summary of the main findings to make these points clearer.
Please note that the vaccine breakthrough figures we are quoting from PHE are for those vaccinated with two doses and do not include the breakthrough figures for those cases who have had just one dose of the vaccine (in which case the figure would be higher).
No breakdown for which vaccine is responsible for the breakthrough cases is given in the PHE documents. The vaccine breakthrough rate is calculated against all Delta cases, not just those from the last 28 days (in which case the figure would be higher).
Update: Kit Yates has a stab at explaining this unexpected data in this article “Most COVID deaths in England now are in the vaccinated – here’s why that shouldn’t alarm you”
