Delta Mutations and “Breakthrough” Infections: Should Americans Be Worried? | Coronavirus

At the same time, a recent report on state-level data from Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that the proportion of breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals was “well below 1% in all reported states, ranging from 0.01% in Connecticut to 0.29% in Alaska.” discovered. In short, groundbreaking cases are extremely rare.

So how do you need to balance these two competing pieces of information?One way is to think that you don’t know how many people were there protected By vaccines in Provincetown, a high-density summer tourist destination.

“Sure, 74% of the cases in Provincetown were vaccinated individuals, but we’re talking about the thousands of vaccinated people who passed through Provincetown at the time,” said the National School of Tropical Medicine. Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, said. Co-director of the Vaccine Development Center at the Texas Children’s Hospital at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “So I think the vaccine was still working at a very high level.”

Instead, the vaccine appears to be very highly protective of serious illness and death, but “may lose some of its second performance function” of reduced transmission.

Study from China Helps explain why. A small study by health authorities in Guangdong Province found that patients infected with Delta had about 1,000 times higher viral load in the respiratory tract than their ancestral strains.

This is important because it is how the vaccine induces immunity. All vaccines approved for distribution in the United States are intramuscular injections. Although they promote a high degree of immunity, the body’s ability to recognize and bind to viruses lies primarily in the antibodies that circulate in the blood. These antibodies are rare in the respiratory tract, which has its own special type of antibody. In theory, this could mean that high viral load in the delta overwhelms immune cells in the respiratory tract while providing strong overall protection. But Hotez is skeptical of the one-on-one comparison.

“There is a mythical perception that vaccinated people are infecting the community with as many viruses as unvaccinated people,” Hotez said. “I think the majority of infections are people who haven’t been vaccinated yet.”

As a reminder, this was an early question in vaccination. Initially, scientists were uncertain whether people would unknowingly spread Covid-19, even if they were vaccinated.This is the explainer Same phenomenon from May..

How much do you need to worry about breakthrough infections?

In the same recent report on state-level data, KFF found that the rates of hospitalization and mortality in breakthrough cases were very low, “virtually zero” in most reporting states.

In addition, it was unclear whether Covid-19 was the cause of death in all cases in which fully vaccinated and infected people died.In other words, some people may have died When Covid-19, but not because Of Covid-19.

Professor Nir Menacemi, Chair of Health Policy, said: Richard M. Fairbanks, Indiana University School of Public Health, is a public health specialist who specializes in hospital growth capabilities, emergency preparedness, and public health management.

“If we weren’t in the heightened awareness of the pandemic, and the fate would be dark, are we really interested in this?” Menacemi said. “Especially when unvaccinated people appear in hospitals on ventilators and morgues?” He suspects.

Much of what we know about the number of breakthroughs comes from the state. The CDC does not collect data on infections in vaccinated individuals. Only for vaccinated people. Hospitalized or died of a breakthrough infection..

Some researchers, such as Menachemi, believe that tracking all the groundbreaking cases identified depletes valuable resources and “creates concerns among those who really don’t have to worry.” increase.

However, not all researchers agree.

Adrian Raftery, a professor of statistical sociology at the University of Washington, Useful scale of Covid-19 casesHowever, it is collected more like the unemployment rate than the total number of confirmed cases. He says there should be a national random sample survey of all Americans in Covid-19, rather than simply monitoring confirmed cases. Such measures can help catch asymptomatic infections, as asymptomatic people are less likely to be tested and have a more accurate picture of the prevalence of breakthrough cases.

This is an idea that helped the CDC understand its surroundings, built on the first survey conducted by Menachemi, one of Covid-19’s earliest random sample surveys last April. 44% of all Covid-19 cases It is asymptomatic.

“We do a random survey of what we care about. The unemployment rate is estimated by a random survey,” says Raftery. “Breakthrough infections – this is a very good example of the kind of data that needs to be tracked, and the cost of making bad decisions is so high that it needs to be tracked.

“If we get over public health, we hurt the economy. If we don’t put enough effort into public health, we hurt people’s health and the economy,” says Raftery. “These are difficult decisions and we need the best data. Just because the country doesn’t have it, some other countries do.”

So what should we do to protect ourselves and others from Delta?

First and foremost, get vaccinated.

Vaccines are now readily available in most of the United States, and in some areas the vaccine can also be given at home. Scientific committees have found that the side effects of generally short-lived, mild vaccinations are far outweighed by the potential risk of transmitting Covid-19.

If you have already been vaccinated, please note that the Covid-19 infection is in your area. CDC Guidance..Your city, county or state Substantial or high infection, And even if you are vaccinated, where should you put the mask in a public indoor setting.

The CDC also recommends that school staff and students wear masks, as children under the age of 12 may not be eligible for vaccination. Experts such as Hotez believe that people taking immunosuppressive drugs and the elderly are more susceptible to breakthrough infections, even if they are vaccinated.

There is little data on “long covid” in breakthrough infectious diseases. We have very little data, but it comes from a study of the New England Journal of Medicine by Israeli researchers. “Persistent” symptoms..

However, breakthrough infections are still rare, and hospitalized cases are even rarer. According to state data, deaths are so rare that they are “virtually zero.”

“We need to get out of the cycle of focusing on breakthrough infections, which I think only increases the anxiety of vaccinated people,” Menacemi said. “I’m not saying [vaccinated individuals] You shouldn’t be wary … they can still get infected. “

“But I think it’s the wrong place for us to focus as a nation,” Menacemi said. “We will not end this pandemic until the vaccination rate rises.”