Covid in Norway: unvaxxed hospitalisations again exceed vaxxed ones for the first time since week 41

Official 'Numbers' from Week 49 (5-12 Dec. 2021), which further indicate calculus isn't the IPH's strong suit

I’d really like to write more about Covidistan and Scandinavia, as well as many other topics, but, Alas!, I do this only in my spare-time. Given the current end-of-year madness, you will get bits and pieces, with a few days delay at times. Apologies are in order, yet sometimes, I do get to prioritise these posts due to their (perceived) importance.

This is one of these prioritised posts, for it’s another Wednesday, which means the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (IPH) came out with its new weekly update on Covid-19 between 6-12 Dec. 2021.

This was a quite busy week for both the Norwegian government and the IPH, which means that this is a longer post with the following contents:

1. A brief reminder of Monday’s new risk assessment by the IPH

2. The ensuing national measures to curb the spread of Covid

3. The IPH’s update for week 49 (6-12 Dec. 2021)

Public Health Officials recommend measures out of concern for the vaccinated

As I reported yesterday, the IPH recently came out with a new risk assessment, dated 13 Dec. 2021. It was quite a read, and in its report, the IPH actually ‘admitted’ to a number of quite astounding facts, among which the following stand out (p. 21):

Given wide-ranging vaccine uptake among our population, there is a high possibility that they [the vaccinated] can be infected and further contribute to the spread of infection.

Here’s the IPH on Omicron (p. 29-30):

Omicron is more transmissible than Delta, in particular due to reduced vaccine efficacy against infection and transmission. Protection is perhaps offered against serious illness.

Omicron is highly likely to exacerbate already-existing problems caused by illness, the overworked healthcare system, and in the wider society on top of Covid-19.

And its recommendations (p. 30-32):

Vaccine-induced protection against (re-) infection is gone after a few months. It looks like protection against serious illness lasts longer.

Thus, while vaccination with the current vaccines alone cannot keep the spread of infection under control…there is an urgent need to slow down the epidemic so that Omicron does not cause an epidemic wave…completely overruns healthcare services (…)

The implications of immunity after infection in vaccinated people must be examined. Since the virus will be with us forever, a long-term strategy must be drawn up to deal with an endemic disease that will probably follow this winter wave.

You can read my own take, incl. more details here.

The Current National Guidelines

These were announced just after the IPH came out with its assessment; there’s an English version (which differs only marginally from the Norwegian one, mainly in issues that aren’t supposedly affecting those few tourists that may come over the next couple of weeks). You can find them here. For a PDF version, click here.

At this point, there’s only two main issues the government recommends:

1. Get vaccinated.

2. Stay home and get tested if you feel sick.

There’s a lot of minutiae, which I’ll spare us all.

Weekly Update for 6-12 Dec. 2021

Like last week, this but a brief update, in line with last week’s comments (and here’s the link to the English ‘summary’).

The report’s composition and emphasis since week 47 (22-28 Nov. 2021) changed, with the biggest change being the omission of vaccination status of Covid-associated deaths. I don’t know why that data is missing this week, but since these data looked particularly awful in the four weeks earlier—that would be weeks 45-48, which saw 4 out of 5 Covid-associated deaths among the ‘fully vaccinated’—I could imagine that this might put people off getting jabbed (again). I would also assume that these numbers may have tilted even further away from the ‘vaccines offer (some) protection against death’ spin.

Whatever the reason, let’s have a look at what the IPH actually published.

Infection dynamic had shifted a bit, with an increase among 18-44yo and a slight decrease among 45+. Yet, while their increase might appear quite large, the numbers remain fairly small, in line with the clear age-stratification of Covid-associated risks.

Thus, seniors (65+) accounted for 46.6% (51% in week 48) of all hospitalisations and 44.2% (42.8% in week 48) of ICU occupancy (tables 3 and 4, p. 11).

Hospitalisations between 30-64yo are also up slightly to 47.4% (44.3% in week 48) and 50.3% of ICU occupancy (51.2% in week 48).

What is different in week 49, though, is that for the first time since week 41 (11-17 Oct. 2021), hospitalisations due to Covid-19 as main of ‘unvaccinated’ exceeded those of the ‘fully vaccinated’, incl. those who got a third jab. The below data comes from pp. 11-12, with the below table 5 on p. 12.

These are the numbers: of the total of 205 new admissions, 106 (52%) were ‘unvaccinated’, as opposed to 90 (44%) among the ‘vaccinated’. What hasn’t changed is that the unvaccinated are younger (median: 53yo) than the vaccinated (median: 72).

In terms of ICU admissions, the main point of interest, I’d argue, is that the median age differential is (almost) gone: the median age among ‘unvaccinated’ is 61, for the ‘vaccinated’ it was 67.

Another set of problems with the IPH’s numbers

Like in previous weeks (at least since week 47), the IPH’s numbers don’t add up.

You see, by week 48, there were a total of 3,022 ‘unvaccinated’ admissions; by week 49, they had increased by 115 to 3,137. The same numbers for the ‘vaccinated’ are 797 (week 48) vs. 894 (week 49), with the difference being 97. Their total (212) helps us to determine the ration, which stood at 54% (115) of admissions for the ‘unvaccinated’ vs. 46% (97) for the ‘vaccinated’.

This makes the split look worse for the ‘unvaccinated’, but keep in mind that the rate of hospitalisations among them increased by some 3.8%. By contrast, the rate of increase among the ‘vaccinated’ stood at slightly more than 12%. Yes, that’s a bit worse for the former and slightly less bad for the latter compared to the previous week, but it provides some context that would otherwise be missing.

As mentioned above, the main change (omission) in week 49 concerns the Covid-associated deaths. In the last couple of weeks, these were also broken down according to vaccination status—about which the last known data point is as follows (see here):

In the past four weeks (45-48), there were 169 Covid-associated deaths in Norway, of which a whopping 78% were among the ‘fully vaccinated’.

Vaccination status omitted now, there’s no chance to follow-up on this right now. Last week’s total (per 5 Dec. 2021) stood at 1,133 dead, by 12 Dec., it had risen to 1,196, an increase of 63 individuals. May they rest in peace.

Still, we can assume that the roughly 22 : 78 ration between ‘unvaccinated’ : ‘vaccinated’, which we observed during the preceding four weeks continues to hold.

I’ve got more on these data before too long—stay tuned.