Remember that hospitalizations take at least 2-3 weeks post infection to occur, and that you don’t see protection from the first dose for at least five days or so.
So you’d expect hospitalizations to lag 18-26 days or so. Also the chart is not saying all those groups had vaccines: those under 60 largely haven’t been. The labels could have been clearer.
It’s just a chart of change in hospitalization by age from a starting date.
Actually, I was wrong. I checked the source paper. I believe the labels refer to cohorts from cities that were early in the vaccination campaign vs cohorts from cities that were late in the campaign.
So 0-59 late vaccinated means some vaccines but later in time and fewer in number.
I'm not sure that is true. As I understand it, it's a cohort of people of that age who live in a geographical area of Israel where vaccination was started early. So it includes people of that age who declined the vaccine/didn't get it fr other reasons.
Of course, you're also correct that another important factor is that some of the cohort are not yet fully protected.
Quote:
In order to distill the possible effect of the vaccinations from other factors, including a third lockdown imposed in Israel on January 2021, we compared the time-dependent changes in number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations between (1) individuals aged 60 years and older, eligible to receive the vaccine earlier and younger individuals (0-59 years old); (2) early-vaccinated cities compared to late-vaccinated cities; (3) early-vaccinated geographical statistical areas (GSAs) compared to late-vaccinated GSAs;
So you’d expect hospitalizations to lag 18-26 days or so. Also the chart is not saying all those groups had vaccines: those under 60 largely haven’t been. The labels could have been clearer.
It’s just a chart of change in hospitalization by age from a starting date.