More than a year and a half after the COVID-19 pandemic began and 10 months after the first vaccines were administered, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon on Wednesday laid out several pieces of data to emphasize the shot’s impact on the local community.
McMahon said 317,906 people in the county have received at least one COVID-19 shot and 293,452 people have completed the vaccination series. Of those fully vaccinated, 3,223 people have still contracted COVID-19, known as “breakthrough cases.” That amounts to 1.09% of those who have gotten the shot.
A total of 14 people in the county who were fully vaccinated have died from COVID-19, according to McMahon. The total death toll since the pandemic began now stands at 761, with 8 deaths recorded since Saturday.
Of the 25 people currently in the ICU, 92% are unvaccinated, McMahon added.
“The data tells the story that the vaccine is our best tool with this virus to stay out of the hospital, to stay out of the ICU, and the vaccines have still been an incredibly effective tool to prevent COVID overall,” McMahon said.
Here are the percentages for which vaccine has been administered in the county:
- Pfizer: 65.8%
- Moderna: 26%
- Johnson & Johnson: 8.2%
Here are the percentages for breakthrough cases and which shot they got:
- Pfizer: 66.7%
- Moderna: 21.1%
- Johnson & Johnson: 12.2%
Onondaga County reported 158 new cases in the last 24 hours.
“The trend is the cases are getting younger,” McMahon said, since individuals under 12 years old are not eligible for the vaccine.
The county executive said for the most part though, children aren’t getting COVID-19 in schools, but getting it at home.
A bigger problem appears to be students who got tested for COVID-19 but the results are slow to return, keeping them out of schools, which require a negative test to come back into the classroom.
As a result, McMahon said a new testing site will open 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Syracuse, on Hamilton Street, to administer return-to-school testing specifically. You can register here.
The county also began administering COVID-19 booster shots on Wednesday, giving more than 400 of them, with about another 500 planned for Thursday.
