County detects few COVID-19 cases among residents who have been fully vaccinated

On a day when California had the lowest rate of coronavirus in the continental United States, San Diego County received some extra good news on Wednesday: local vaccine stocks increased significantly this week, and the number of people still vaccinated becoming infected was small.

Dr Eric McDonald, medical director of the province’s epidemiology department, said during a weekly coronavirus briefing that 203 locals out of the 846,886 fully immunized tested positive for COV2 infection as of Tuesday.

This denominator includes only those who are at least two weeks outside their final dose.

“We had no people admitted to the hospital, and no people who died. In fact, the majority – 57 percent – had no symptoms at all, “McDonald said. ‘These are people who have been fully vaccinated and tested for other reasons, for example because they were in health care.’

This is an infection rate of about 0.024 percent after vaccination in San Diego County.

However, actual world studies have estimated that coronavirus vaccines are approximately 90 percent effective in generating a strong enough immune system response to fight infection. This means that 10 percent of those who are now fully vaccinated – about 84,000 people in San Diego County – can become infected if they are exposed to the virus. About 1.7 percent of the tests have returned positive in the past two weeks, indicating that there are likely to be more than 203 people infected after being fully vaccinated. This is good news, because their illness was not serious enough to seek medical help.

While San Diego’s number is small, it’s nonetheless about three times the national rate, McDonald’s said. According to a report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, there have been 5,816 confirmed COV2 infections so far among the 75 million Americans who have been vaccinated at a rate of about 008 percent. .

The public health world calls these people – those who still get sick after full vaccination – cases “breakthrough” because their immune systems did not generate enough response to stop the target pathogen.

McDonald was not concerned that the small breakthrough rate detected so far in San Diego County is greater than the national rate. He made the difference that local jurisdictions get data faster, so the San Diego score is simply more up to date.

No one should be surprised, according to him, that some people still become infected after vaccination. While recent efficacy studies have found that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are 90 percent effective two weeks after a second dose, they leave 10 percent without full protection.

“We expect to see the numbers, it’s very, very low and highlights how well the honest vaccine works,” McDonald said.

Although San Diego County apparently observed a total lack of serious diseases among local breakthrough cases, this was not the case nationwide. The CDC report found that 396 or 7 percent of the breakthrough cases were hospitalized and that 74 or 12 percent of those died, although some thought the outcomes were due to reasons not directly related to the disease.

The country also announced on Wednesday that the state had allocated 294,440 doses of vaccine to suppliers in the region this week, a number that is nearly 100,000 more than was made available last week and the most made available in a single week since March 1. . It was not clear whether this week’s award is a one-week record since vaccination began in mid-December.

Nathan Fletcher, chairman of the provincial board of supervisors, said this week’s award is the beginning or not of a trend.

“We still do not know what next week will look like, but it is encouraging,” Fletcher said.

The pace of the local pandemic continued its flat track in Wednesday’s report with 263 new cases and 187 COVID-related hospitalizations reported on Tuesday.

California, which has recently been criticized regularly for its relatively strict level on reopening, is at the bottom of the agenda when the CDC updated national figures on Wednesday, averaging 40.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the previous seven days. . Michigan is 483 per 100,000, with Florida at 201 and Texas at 65.9.

Source