How One State Is Tracing 'Vaccine Breakthrough' Cases: Fully Vaccinated People Who Test Positive for COVID-19

It's defined as someone fully vaccinated who still tests positive for COVID-19 after their last shot.

"They've either received the two doses of Moderna or Pfizer and have waited 14 days after that, or the one dose of Johnson & Johnson and 14 days after that, then they test positive," said Nebraska Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Gary Anthone.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services believes there are about 15 cases in the state.

"It's to be expected. The vaccines are not 100% effective against, you know, getting infected by the virus," he said.

"With COVID vaccines, getting an infection after vaccination is pretty rare," said Dr. David Quimby, an infectious disease physician with CHI Health.

Infectious disease experts point to vaccine studies, which show when someone contracts COVID-19 after receiving both doses, they won't be as sick and are less likely to die than if they didn't get vaccinated.

"If I get a little bit of runny nose and cough and get better at home, that's OK. I just don't want to get admitted to the hospital and have a worse outcome," said Dr. Renuga Vivekanandan, an infectious disease physician with CHI Health.

The doctors said similar to the flu shot, some people still get sick but it's just not as severe. Nebraska's 15 vaccine breakthrough cases prove the pandemic is not over, the doctors said.

"If you get a mild illness and are not distancing and not wearing a mask, you could expose many many people who have not been lucky enough to be vaccinated and then the pandemic will start ramping up again locally," Quimby said.

“Post-vaccination “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections are being taken “seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday as federal officials expressed concern about rising coronavirus cases in the US.

“With regard to the breakthrough cases of people who have been vaccinated and ultimately have gotten infection, obviously this is something that we take seriously and follow closely,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert said during virtual White House coronavirus briefing.

Fauci explained that some breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated individuals is not entirely uncommon with any vaccination effort.

“You will see breakthrough infections in any vaccination when you’re vaccinating literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people, so in some respects that’s not surprising,” said Fauci.

Fauci said that “one of the important things that will be done, and must be done, is to sequence the genome of the virus that’s the breakthrough virus” in order to find out whether infection was from the original virus strain or one of the COVID-19 variants.

“It would be very important to see if they broke through with the wild-type virus, which would indicate a real diminution of immunity or whether it broke through with one of the variants, which would be much more explainable if you don’t have enough cross-reactivity,” he said.”

New York Times:

“In the next few months, Pfizer and Moderna are expected to release data that should indicate how often vaccinated people become infected by the virus, even if they have no symptoms. The companies have been testing participants in their vaccine trials for antibodies to a protein called N that is part of the coronavirus but not part of the vaccine. Finding those antibodies means that a vaccinated person has been infected by the virus. Some volunteers from the studies are also having their noses swabbed regularly to test for an active viral infection.”

The only metric that matters is hospitalization and death numbers. It’s expected the vaccines are not going to be amazing against the new variants.

You are likely to get infected but your infection will asymptomatic or be mild like some sniffles instead of hospitalization or death.

Of course, as with any vaccine, there are particularities in each person’s immune system and health that may cause vaccine escape. Even measles vaccine is only 97%.

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