Of the millions of people across the country who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has only recorded a few thousand breakthrough cases of the disease, the agency said Thursday.
Breakthrough cases, no matter the illness, are defined as when a “fully vaccinated person later gets the disease they were vaccinated for,” per government health agencies.
On Friday, the CDC confirmed to Spectrum News in an email that around 5,800 said cases were reported to the agency as of Tuesday, April 13.
According to the latest CDC tally, over 80 million people nationwide have completed a full round of COVID-19 vaccinations — meaning the breakthrough cases occurred in less than a fraction of a percent of those who have received two jabs from either Pfizer or Moderna, or a got a single-dose shot from Johnson & Johnson before health agencies recommended the vaccine’s administration be temporarily paused earlier this week.
Experts maintain the breakthrough cases are to be anticipated with any kind of vaccine, with the CDC saying in part: “… We expect thousands of vaccine breakthrough cases will occur even though the vaccine is working as expected.”
While the breakthrough COVID cases span across all ages of those eligible for a vaccine, a little over 40% of the cases were identified in people 60 years of age and older. Sixty-five percent of those who contracted COVID after being fully vaccinated were female, and 29% of the total infections were asymptomatic.
Only 7% of those with breakthrough COVID cases were hospitalized, and 74 people — around 1% of the overall cases — died.
“Vaccine breakthrough infections make up a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated,” the CDC wrote in an emailed statement. “CDC recommends that all eligible people get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is available to them. CDC also continues to recommend people who have been fully vaccinated should keep taking precautions in public places, like wearing a mask, staying at least 6 feet apart from others, avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, and washing their hands often.”
While the CDC is not currently providing a public state-by-state breakdown of the cases, the agency opened an online “COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough database,” where state health departments and officials can enter and track data associated with jurisdictional cases.
The CDC will continue to monitor the breakthrough cases for any links between patient demographics, vaccine lot number, vaccine type, and more. But the agency says to date, “no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics.”
It’s not unexpected for such breakthrough cases to occur, with Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious disease expert — saying during a Monday press briefing: “There are always breakthroughs regardless of what the efficacy of the vaccine is.”
The two vaccines available since December — Pfizer and Moderna — were highly effective at 90% after two doses, the CDC reported in late March. In testing, the vaccines were about 95% effective in preventing COVID-19.
Before the non-mandated pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the CDC said the company’s single-dose shot was around 66.3% effective at preventing COVID-19 during clinical trials.
One theory that the CDC is investigating is whether the breakthrough cases were associated with any particular strand of the virus variant. Last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, is now the dominant strain in the U.S.
“Some of these breakthroughs are, of course, failure of an immune response in the host, and then some of them, we worry, might be related to a variant that is circulating,” Walensky told Congress on Thursday.
Dr. Fauci hinted at the same thing on Monday, saying: “Depending upon the particular variant, vaccines handle them relatively well or not necessarily as well.”
But that does not mean people should stop getting vaccinated out of fear of breakthrough cases from variant strains — in fact, Fauci said, it means exactly the opposite.
“The bottom line is the vaccines we are using very well protect against the most dominant variant we have right now, and to varying degrees protect against serious disease among several of the other variants,” he told the New York Times on Thursday, adding that the prevalence of variant strains are “all the more reason to get vaccinated.”
Despite vaccine efficacy possibly being reduced across various strains, COVID-19 of all varieties spreads much faster among unvaccinated populations. On top of that, a variety of research has shown that Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccines were at least moderately effective at preventing the B.1.1.7 variant.
So while the CDC continues to investigate the breakthrough cases, experts agree on one thing: get vaccinated if and when you can.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
