After seeing COVID-19 hospitalizations peek near 200 patients in December, similar to numbers witnessed in December 2020, HealthPartners officials said Wednesday that those numbers are seeing a slight decrease to start the new year.
"We're down about 30 percent right now from what we saw in December," said HealtPartners co-executive medical director Dr. Mark Sannes on the WCCO Radio Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar.
Dr. Sannes said the December 2020 peek reached close to 230 patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
While there are vaccinated individuals hospitalized with COVID-19, the number of unvaccinated individuals is far greater according to HealthPartners.
"It's about 3 to 1 unvaccinated to vaccinated in the hospitalized group," he said. "The group that's vaccinated and hospitalized is that same high-risk group that we saw early on in the pandemic including the elderly and people with underlying health conditions."
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The ratio grows even more when considering HealthPartners' ICUs.
"That unvaccinated to vaccinated ratio grows to about 9 to 1 across our hospitals," added Sannes.
Breakthrough cases are still causing issues when it comes to people deciding whether or not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
"Folks think the vaccine doesn't work because of the breakthrough infections, which couldn't be further from the truth. This vaccine is keeping people out of the hospital and it's keeping people from dying."
On Tuesday, Mayo Clinic announced the firing of 700 employees who did not comply with a vaccine mandate policy implemented by the Rochester-based hospital. Those 700 employees make-up approximately 1 percent of Mayo's staff across all locations.
HealthPartners is seeing similar results with their staff getting vaccinated.
"Vaccinated or approved medical/religious exemptions exceeded 99 percent of our employees," Dr. Sannes said. "It was less than 1 percent of our employees that didn't seek an appropriate exemption, or didn't get vaccinated."
Minneapolis-based Allina Health reported in December that over 99.8 percent of its nearly 27,000 workers had been vaccinated or received exemptions.