Only two “breakthrough” infections among hundreds of fully vaccinated, new study finds

Among the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, 417 employees at Rockefeller University who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna shots vaccinated two or about 0.5%.

“We have characterized bona fide examples of breakthrough by vaccines that manifest as clinical symptoms,” the researchers wrote in their study. “These observations in no way undermine the importance of the urgent efforts being made at the federal and state level to vaccinate the American people. They also support the efforts to promote a new vaccine enhancer (as well as a pan-coronavirus vaccine). provides greater protection against variants. “

Researchers at Rockefeller University found that coronavirus variants with different differences from the original virus caused the breakthrough infections.

A variant that infected one of the patients had the mutation E484K, which was first found in the B.1.351 variant originally identified in South Africa. E484K has been termed an “escape mutant” because it has shown that it is possible to escape the antibodies produced by coronavirus vaccines. One of the mutations found in infections from both participants included D614G, which originated early in the pandemic.

One of the breakthrough infections was in a healthy 51-year-old woman who received her second dose of Moderna vaccine on 19 February. Nineteen days later, she tested positive for Covid-19 on March 10 after developing symptoms.

The other breakthrough infection was in a healthy 65-year-old woman who received her second dose of Pfizer vaccine on February 9th. She later learned that her partner, who had not been vaccinated, tested positive for Covid-19 on March 3rd. the following days the woman developed her own symptoms. She tested positive for Covid-19 on March 17th.

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More research is needed to determine whether similar findings regarding breakthrough infections or variants would emerge in a larger group of participants from different parts of the United States.

Experts believe that some breakthrough cases of Covid-19 are expected in people who have been fully vaccinated, as no vaccine is 100% effective.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNN that the agency has so far received less than 6,000 reports of breakthrough coronavirus infections among more than 84 million people who have been fully vaccinated nationwide.

The CDC said breakthrough cases occurred in people of all ages who were vaccinated, but a little over 40% were in people 60 or older. They were also more common in women and 29% were asymptomatic.

The agency said it had developed a national database of Covid-19 breakthroughs so that health departments could report it

“The breakthrough infections of vaccines make up a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated. CDC recommends that all eligible people receive a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is available,” the CDC said in a statement to CNN said.

CNN’s Ben Tinker and Maggie Fox contributed to this report.

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