DATA from Princess Margaret Hospital shows of the 104 COVID-19 deaths between August 1 and September 8 more than 95 percent of those patients were unvaccinated. This accounts for 99 people.
The data also shows five deaths for partially vaccinated people — or 4.81 percent — while no fully vaccinated person died within the timeframe.
In terms of hospitalisations during this time period, less than one percent of people admitted to hospital were fully vaccinated. However, 95.75 percent — or 383 people — of those admitted were unvaccinated while 3.5 percent — or 14 people — were partially vaccinated.
Wesley Francis, consultant surgical oncologist at PMH, explained the origin of the data to The Tribune.
“All those patients who are admitted are put in a simple Excel spreadsheet and categorised according to demographics and comorbidities,” he said yesterday. “A friend in Bermuda sent me one of those graphs where they were showing those hospitalised and one of the variables they included was vaccine status.
“They created a nice graph so I said, ‘(Dr) Forbes we should probably start doing that also.’ We then basically added another variable which was vaccine status and we started to collect data. Patients had to show if they were vaccinated, they have to show their vaccine card which includes information about when they were vaccinated. As the data sort of matured, we started to analyse it and show the majority of people being admitted were really unvaccinated. The data speaks for itself.
“I tried to get Doctors Hospital’s data but they weren’t recording it properly. I think they’re now starting to do that. Maybe in a couple of weeks they will figure it out. I wanted follow-up data from them too because some people are transferred out west and get discharged and I wanted that data but it’s hard and I couldn’t get that because again, Doctors Hospital wasn’t recording that. This was really just a group of residents at PMH who came together and did this. It is especially important to get the data from Doctors Hospital now that their volume is getting up there with PMH’s numbers.
“People focus on vaccine status but examining co-morbidities is really important because it allows us to predict who may die and we can use that as a way to triage patients and treat them. If you can use the model and determine who will be the sicker patients, maybe they can get a different cocktail of treatment because we have limited resources. That’s really the whole idea behind this thing but again, the public wants to know about vaccinated and unvaccinated,” he said.
During a press conference on Friday, Dr Nikkiah Forbes, director of the National HIV/ AIDS and Infectious Diseases Programme at the Ministry of Health, said of those admitted to hospital partially vaccinated, many had taken the shot less than 14 days prior to admission.
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