Vaccinated people can get Covid, but it is most likely very rare

More than two months after he was completely vaccinated against Covid, a New York doctor woke up with a headache and dull, severe fatigue. Soon the fever and chills continued, and his taste and smell began to fade.

He thought this couldn’t happen. But it was: He tested positive for the coronavirus.

“It was a big shock,” he said. He knew that there was no perfect vaccine and that the Pfizer-BioNTech shots he received were found to be 95% effective in large clinical trials. “But for some reason, it was 100 percent,” he said.

Doctors who requested anonymity to protect their privacy are one of the few reported cases of infection after partial or complete vaccination. Almost 83 million Americans have been vaccinated with at least one Covid vaccine, and it is unclear how many of them will have “breakthrough” infections, but two new reports show that numbers are very high. It is said that there are few.

According to one study, only four of the 8,121 fully vaccinated employees at the Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas were infected. The other is that only seven of the 14,990 workers at UC San Diego Health and David Gefen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles have been positive for more than two weeks after receiving a second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. I found that it was there. .. Both reports, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday, show how well vaccines work in the real world and during periods of severe infection.

However, these groundbreaking cases, which are extremely rare, clearly remind that vaccinated people are not invincible, especially if the virus continues to circulate widely.

Dr. Francesca J. Triani, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego Health, said: California studies. “These measures need to be continued until the majority of the population is vaccinated.”

In a California study, only some Covid-positive health care workers showed symptoms, she said, and they tended to be mild, suggesting that the vaccine was defensive. This reflects data from vaccine trials showing that the breakthrough infection was mild and did not require hospitalization. Some people were completely asymptomatic and were found only through testing in studies or as part of their medical care.

For example, doctors at the University of North Carolina found some asymptomatic cases of vaccinated patients who had been tested for coronavirus before surgery or other medical procedures, the center’s vaccine clinic said. Dr. David Wohl, Medical Director, said.

He said the absence of symptoms could mean that the vaccine was serving its intended purpose. Prevents people from getting sick without completely stopping the infection of the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a small team to study breakthrough cases, said Kristen Nordland, a spokeswoman for the institution. One question researchers are considering is whether certain variants of the coronavirus may play a role in breakthrough cases.

“Currently, there is no evidence that post-vaccination Covid-19 is caused by changes in the virus,” said Nordlund.

In the coming months, Pfizer and Moderna will release data showing how often vaccinated people get the virus, even if they are asymptomatic. Both companies are testing participants in vaccine trials for antibodies to a protein called N that is part of the coronavirus but not part of the vaccine. Finding these antibodies means that the vaccinated person is infected with the virus. Some volunteers in the study regularly wipe their noses to test for active viral infections.

Another question, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, is how effective the vaccine is for people whose immune system is weakened by illness or medication. Breakthrough cases may occur in those people because their bodies cannot react strongly to the vaccine.

“And it’s amazing how widespread immunodeficiency is,” said Dr. Schaffner. He called this condition “a proof of modern medicine.” Because many patients suffering from it have been successful in treating conditions that would not have killed them so long ago.

A doctor who became ill in New York despite a complete vaccination was quarantined at home for nearly two weeks. He described his illness as relatively mild and said he had been treated with monoclonal antibodies to fight the virus. “If the worst flu was 10, this was 4,” he said.

He said he would have been ill without the vaccine.

“I would have been afraid of my death,” he said. “But I wasn’t worried for a moment. I didn’t think I would die. I don’t think you would die — that’s pretty big.”

Apoorva Mandavilli contributed to the report.