UK correction of Covid-19 admissions error raises more questions than answers

Two hours after the Press briefing, as ‘anti-vaxxers’ delighted in the news, he issued a correction via Twitter

Sir Patrick Vallance said he misspoke but it just does not add up LONDON/ALAMY

During a media briefing Monday evening, the United Kingdom chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, sent social media into a frenzy after he apparently misspoke, saying 60% of people being admitted to hospital with Covid-19 were double vaccinated.

Two hours after the press briefing, as ‘anti-vaxxers’ delighted in the news, he issued a correction via Twitter:

“Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July. About 60% of hospitalisations from covid are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people.”

Ordinarily, this would be the end of it; people misspeak all the time. It would not be surprising if one said “vaccinated” when in fact they meant to say “unvaccinated”.

In this particular case, it gets a bit more complicated because Sir Vallance had given a perfectly plausible explanation as to why 60 percent of admissions were made up of double vaccinated people.

During the press briefing he had said:

“In terms of the number of people in hospitals who have been double vaccinated, we know it is about 60 percent of the people being admitted to hospital.

“That is not surprising, the vaccines are not a 100 percent effective. They are very very effective but not a 100 percent.

“As a higher proportion of the population is double vaccinated, it is inevitable that those 10 percent of that very large number remain at risk and therefore will be amongst the people who both catch the infection and end up in hospital.

“The answer is we should expect to see a higher proportion of people in hospital and catching the infection who are double vaccinated. That is inevitable, we will see that, because of the less than 100 percent efficacy of the vaccines overall.”

This explanation was provided to explain a figure that might have confused the public and it was pretty detailed and logical.

Since Sir Vallance now claims he misspoke and actually meant to say unvaccinated instead of vaccinated, what is to be made for the rest of his beautiful logic? Was he making it up on the go during the media briefing?

Unfortunately, not. The same explanation is given in a 31st March, 2021 government document that can be found here:

Paragraph 32 says:

“The resurgence in both hospitalisations and deaths is dominated by those that have received two doses of the vaccine, comprising around 60% and 70% of the wave respectively. This can be attributed to the high levels of uptake in the most at-risk age groups, such that immunisation failures account for more serious illness than unvaccinated individuals. This is discussed further in paragraphs 55 and 56.”

Paragraph 56 says:

“This shows that most deaths and admissions in a post-Roadmap resurgence are in people who have received two vaccine doses, even without vaccine protection waning or a variant emerging that escapes vaccines. This is because vaccine uptake has been so high in the oldest age groups (modelled here at 95% in the over 50-year olds). There are therefore 5% of over 50-year olds who have not been vaccinated, and 95% x 10% = 9.5% of over 50-year olds who are vaccinated but, nevertheless, not protected against death. This is not the result of vaccines being ineffective, merely uptake being so high.”

Again, this appears to make perfect sense and is consistent with the comments by Sir Vallance on Monday evening.

It is certainly peculiar and warranting further investigation that this position has been corrected in a tweet without an attempt to reconcile the implications of changing “vaccinated” to “unvaccinated” with the published government position as well as his eloquent justification of those numbers on Monday evening.

Was Sir Vallance also incorrect in his explanation as to why it is to be expected that more vaccinated people will be admitted as a greater proportion of the population is vaccinated? Was the 31st March 2021 government document also incorrect in this assertion?

One can be forgiven for suspecting that Sir Vallance did not in fact make a mistake but was pressured to change his position for the purposes of political messaging.