CDC Is Studying Cases of COVID "Vaccine Breakthrough"

Rob Stein, health correspondent at NPR, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Rob pleasure. You know now is more and more people are getting vaccinated. You know, the numbers are in the millions. Now, we are starting to see a lot of these more you know, rarer occurrences. Obviously, we've been hearing about things with Johnson and Johnson and their vaccine and these very rare instances of blood clots.

Will see all that figured out. But we're also starting to see some breakthrough cases of COVID people who have gotten vaccinated and still get COVID nineteen. Still the numbers are pretty low, but we're seeing states like Michigan, Florida, I think, and Washington report a few hundred cases of this, and the CDC is looking into it to see why this might be happening. So Rob, tell us a little

bit about what we're learning. That's right, as you said, you know, the faction has been administered to something more than seventy five million people have now been fully vaccinated in the United States, and it's unclear how often this phenomenon occurs, the vaccine breakthrough, but there have been hundreds of cases reported around the country, as you mentioned, and so you know, so far most of the cases seem like they're pretty mild, but in some cases people do

get pretty sick, and there have even been some test reported. So it's something that's not unexpected, but it's something that scientists would like to know more about to figure out this way to prevent them happening. In these deaths, as you noted in the article, they have been in older Americans that you know, we know the virus attacks them in a different way. So some of those instances of death have been in elderly people. And you know, the reason why we talk about these things is you see

a lot of headlines. They can be misleading sometimes and you have to kind of dig into it to see how rare it is and how expected it is. You know, when we talk about the efficacy of vaccines, especially with fiser and maderna, they were up in the high nineties the mid nineties, a real world test they said, you know, right about but that's not a hundred percent. So these reinfections, these breakthroughs are expected. No vaccine is perfect. Every vaccine

fails in some cases. So nobody was expecting this vaccine to be a d percent protective. Are there? In fact? You know, the study show that they work really well. They seem to protect people against infection about eight percent another time, they protect people against getting really sick or even dying in excess of percent at a time, but that's not a hundred percent of the time, so you know,

it doesn't work in every single case. And so what's reassuring is that even when people do seem to get infected when they've been vaccinated, it does seem like their infections tend to be more mile for the most parts, so it does perhaps offer them some protection. But as you said, you know, it doesn't always work, and so it's not just trying to figure out, you know, if there is anything that we've done to boost the effectiveness

even higher. And so there's a variety of possibilities. One possibility is maybe some people just don't mount as robust immune responses other people. That could be especially to an older people who we know don't tend to respond to strongly to vaccinations, So it could be why we're seeing

that happen more in that population. It could be that maybe it's the amount of virus that people are exposed to initially, If they're exposed to a high amount of virus, maybe it's so much that overcomes the protection that the vaccine provides. And the third possibility are you know, the variants, which we know are for sure working changes, and there's some evidence that they may be able to evade the

vaccines more easily. It's unclear how often that happens, but it could be a possibility that that's what's going on in some cases where it could be a combination of all those factors. Right, Viral load versus variants seems to be where you know, a lot of the focus will probably be because as people get vaccinated, they feel a little more comfortable, maybe not wearing the mask, letting their

guard down a little bit. But you could be in a situation where the viral load is especially high in your surroundings, or as you mentioned, the variants constantly changing

and could be evading some of the vaccines. But you know, just to kind of prove the point of some of these real world studies that have been done so far, there was a study done and you see San Diego where they looked at healthcare workers who were fully vaccinated and between December February there was thirty six thousand healthcare workers they looked at. Less than one percent got reinfected, and as you mentioned earlier, the cases were more mild

than you know if they had not been vaccinated. In your story, you did talk about an elderly woman who who got reinfected. Tell me a little bit about her story. Yes, yes, as I said, it's important for it to make that if the if these break to infecting, the current the stinking right now is they are very very very rare and then for most people there is some protection. But yeah, I did speak to a woman, her name is ginger

Eat when she's seventy three. She lives in Dallas, Georgia, you know, she got two shots of the fires the vaccine, and she thought she was protected and never anything to worry about. But she continued to be careful, you know, she kept wearing her mask, she kept using hand sanitizer,

she kept wiping down the grocery carts with wipes. But a few weeks after her second though, she started to feel a scratchy throat and then she got congested, and then she started coughing, and she ended up getting a test after she lost her sense of smell, and it turned out it came back positive, you know, and she was really surprised, and she thought she was good to go. But you know, lucky for her, she didn't get that sick. She was already sick for about ten days and then

she recovered. And she's still very grateful that she got vaccinated because she had some friends in her church who did not and weren't so lucky. They got infected and they ended up but dying from COVID. So, you know, she's trying to get the message out that these vaccines aren't perfect, but it's better to get vaccine event than not. But you have to still be careful even if you are vaccine definitely, so you know the CDC and you

know other you know places around the country. I'm assuming we're all looking into vaccine breakthrough seeing what's happening, but as we mentioned, it's expected you should still get out there and go get those vaccines. Yeah. No, absolutely, and I think it's important also to make distinct machine getting infected in reinfectioned. Is no evidence of people who have

been vaccinally can get infected twice. There's some evidence that they could get infected for the first time because the vaccines it didn't work in their case, but it is you know, the message is consistent that people should even if they've been in activated, they shouldn't let the other guards that you keep wearing, those masks that you keep socially distancing, you know, they have some protection, but they're

not completely protected. Rob Stein, Health correspondent at NPR. Thank you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow us on iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcast