March 7, 2022

California Omicron Deaths Surprisingly High Among Vaccinated Patients

An analysis by the Bay Area News Group of the four deadliest weeks of the delta and omicron surges finds that three times more vaccinated people died in the state during the omicron peak than during delta’s heyday. And public health officials in Philadelphia are concerned that vaccination efforts are not reaching enough children.

Bay Area News Group: COVID-19 Deaths In California Among Vaccinated Rose Sharply With Omicron
During a three-week stretch at the height of this winter’s devastating omicron case surge, Santa Cruz County health officials lost 10 patients to COVID-19. All but one were vaccinated, and five had received booster shots. As the omicron wave recedes, California data reveal an unsettling trend. Compared to the delta variant case surge last summer, deaths among the vaccinated rose sharply with omicron, a variant said by many experts to cause milder illness. A Bay Area News Group analysis of state COVID-19 deaths found that in the four deadliest weeks of the delta and omicron surges, the number of unvaccinated people who died were nearly identical, and far higher than the totals for the vaccinated. Even so, three times more vaccinated people died during the omicron peak than during delta’s heyday. (Woolfolk, Blair Rowan and DeRuy, 3/6)

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/california-omicron-deaths-surprisingly-high-among-vaccinated-patients/

Feb 08, 2022  •  February 8, 2022

An analysis of the data by the National Post shows that of the Albertans who died from Dec. 30 to Jan. 30, 57 per cent were 80 or older and 81 per cent at least 70. Which is not much different than it was during the pandemic’s second wave.

In the same period from the end of 2020 to Jan. 30, 2021, 65 per cent of the 377 people who died in Alberta with COVID were 80 or more and 84 per cent 70 or older.

The main reason significant numbers of those people are still dying is the sheer volume of Canadians being infected, but old and frail people also mount a weaker immune response generally to infection, said Chagla, while vaccines work less well on them.

“Three doses of vaccine in someone as medically frail as an 80 year old, a mild illness can still take that person over the edge,” he said.

At the same time, some of the treatments that proved effective on previous variants have stumbled against Omicron. Many of the promising monoclonal antibody drugs — synthetic antibodies designed to fight particular viruses — have not worked well with the latest variant, noted Brown.

https://nationalpost.com/health/why-canada-is-still-seeing-so-many-people-die-from-covid-and-is-lucky-omicron-didnt-hit-earlier

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04894266?spons=resverlogix&draw=2&rank=1#contacts

Questions:

1. The vaccinated are dying from Omicron, so why was it so difficult to get them to enlist in the study? Why keep making it sound like the unvaxxed are to blame for the slow start?

2. Where are we now re the Estimated Primary Completion Date?

3. Morocco...wild-goose chase?

Thx!