Almost 4,000 citizens of Massachusetts who have been fully vaccinated against COVID still got infected with the deadly disease. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported on June 12 that there had been 3,791 confirmed new infections from the 3.7 million fully vaccinated people in the state, or 1% of the fully vaccinated population.
"We're learning that many of the breakthrough infections are asymptomatic or they're very mild and brief in duration," Davidson Hamer, a Boston University infectious diseases specialist told the Boston Herald, as reported by the Epoch Times. "The viral load is not very high."
Hamer explained that breakthrough cases, which are infections that occur two or more weeks after a person gets fully vaccinated against COVID, are "expected" and that there must be a better understanding of which subset of people are at higher risk for transmitting COVID to other people. He added that in some cases, fully vaccinated people who were infected with COVID after they were inoculated would shed "low levels of the virus and won't be transmitting to others."
Hamer echoes the same advice the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on its website, which is that "vaccine breakthrough cases are expected." The CDC reminds the public that such vaccines are "effective and are a critical tool to bring the pandemic under control." However, they also warned that COVID vaccines do not provide 100% protection against the virus, which is why a small percentage of fully vaccinated folks will still test positive for the disease.
According to the Independent, data shows that Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines are about 90% effective in protecting against COVID infections two weeks after the second dose. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson single COVID dose can provide 72% protection against moderate to severe cases of the disease. Clinical trial results say that all three vaccines were successful in preventing severe cases in which patients must be hospitalized or even die from the disease.
A new CDC report says that among fully vaccinated people, more than six out of 10 breakthrough COVID cases occurred in females with a median age of 58. Among the over 10,000 breakthrough infections that were reported through April 30, 10% of the patients required hospital care and 1.5% died. Those who did perish from the disease despite being fully vaccinated had a median age of 82 years.
Sequencing data of the 555 breakthrough cases of COVID showed that more than 60% stemmed from variants of the deadly disease, including the B.1.1.7 variant, which is better known as the U.K. variant that originated from the United Kingdom.
According to CBS Boston, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported that 33 people have tested positive for COVID as of Tuesday, but it was unclear if any of these were breakthrough cases. The state's weighted average of COVID positive tests is now at 0.34% and 1,838 active cases in the state. Over 4.1 million people or 59.76% of Massachusetts's population have now been fully vaccinated, as per Google News.
