COVID-19 infections of vaccinated Hungarians revealed - But for what?
A reader of local news portal 444.hu has requested and - miracles still happen - received detailed data from the National Directorate-General for Hospitals which revealed what percentages of those inoculated against coronavirus contracted SARS-CoV-2, were hospitalised, and died. A breakdown according to age is also included in the disclosed statistics. None of these pieces of information have been made public until now. Normally, we would be happy that authorities increase rather than reduce the transparency of COVID-19 statistics for a change, but sadly it’s all BS.
Although it is a welcome change that Hungarian authorities disclose such data at the request of anyone, and, in this case, of an ordinary citizen no less. But the usability of the figures is practically zero. They are unfit to draw any conclusion from. Period.
Here's a summary table, but you need to read on or it might confuse you. Plus there are detailed tables below.
Here's goes nothing
The data request was submitted on 18 July and the response was received at last on 31 August. The inquisitive person wanted to know how vaccinated people at least 21 days after their first and second doses weathered the pandemic, how many of them were infected by coronavirus, were hospitalised, and died.
The set of data provided does not specify any kind of date relating to the statistics. There’s no cut-off date, no time stamp, no timeframe, nothing. We can only guess the period during which the data were collected but it’s a needle in a haystack thing.
There’s no way of knowing whether, for instance, the 110 infections of people inoculated with two doses of Moderna’s shot were recorded over a month, three months, or seven months. And this goes for the rest of the figures.
Also note that Hungary did not start to use all vaccines at once. Here are the kick-off dates:
- Pfizer-BioNtech – Week 52 (2020)
- Moderna – Week 2
- AstraZeneca – Week 5
- Sputnik V – Week 5
- Sinopharm – Week 7
- Janssen – Week 15
Catch this! Aw, you missed it...
The only number we can go buy is the total number of people vaccinated. And that is also confusing.
The total number of people vaccinated with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine is 5,593,891 in the database. We find this number in the 25 July report by the official government portal.
However, there’s also a figure for the number of people vaccinated with two doses: 5,315,933. This figure was released on 20 July, though. So, when was the snapshot taken? Maybe on 15 August. Maybe on 20 August. Maybe on 28 August. Who knows?
What we see is definitely a snapshot of the COVID-19 situation regarding vaccinated people, but we don’t know when it was taken. Based on the ECDC’s vaccine tracker database, our best guess is that the cut-off date was after 29 August. That is the end of the 34th week and that’s as far as the ECDC’s numbers go. However, there are inconsistent gaps between the number of shots administered per vaccine. A couple of hundred would be normal, but there is no way Hungary administered some 144,000 more 1st doses and nearly 222,000 more 2nd doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty than what ECDC reported.
One thing is for certain. The datasets provided for infections, hospitalisations and deaths are not connected. They cannot cover the same sets of people. They just cannot.
If they do…that’s dramatic. If they do, then 25% of people inoculated with one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine ended up in hospital when infected with coronavirus, and 23.3% of them died. The death / infection rate among them was 5.8%. The corresponding figures for those that received two shots are not much better at 15.5%, 22.3% and 3.5%, respectively.
If we assume that the starting date for collecting these data was January this year, then the table for COVID-19 deaths after vaccinations might be good for something. About 20,000 people have died in Hungary this year and vaccines have been administered since 19 January. Calculating with the 829 deaths of vaccinated people we find that vaccine efficacy against death is 95 to 96%.
But there are other impossible numbers here. If there’s a connection between the three datasets, you’re worst off with two doses of Moderna’s vaccine than one, and your chances of making out of the hospital alive are not much better with two doses of Comirnaty than one.
If there’s one thing these figures might tell us is that the efficacy of vaccines does grow weaker with age, and elderly people are more likely to contract COVID-19, end up in hospital, and die than younger people.
Not that this wasn’t clear already.
According to the data provided, more than 16,000 vaccinated people (either with one or two doses) contracted coronavirus at least 21 days after their dose was received. The 0.2% and 0.09% infection rates, after the first and second doses respectively, should be great but these data are also useless. We don’t know if these 16,000 infections were recorded in the whole country, or in a single hospital and we don’t know the length of the period during which they were reported. An 0.2% breakthrough infection rate at least 21 days after the 1st dose could be smashing for an extended period of time but if it refers to a single day, not so much.
Besides, Hungary performs an extremely low number of tests which means that only those vaccinated and infected people are in this particular statistical release who had severe symptoms.
With less than 57% of the Hungarian population fully vaccinated against coronavirus, it would be most important to know what percentage of the infected / hospitalised / deceased people with COVID-19 were NOT inoculated. Unfortunately, this particular set of data does not quench our thirst for that information, either.
Anyhow, here are all the data you need (or don’t), including three separate tables with an age breakdown, three summary tables (as above) and a bonus table to show hospitalisation / infection, death / hospitalisation, and death / infection rates should the three sets of data were connected.
