70% of fully vaccinated prisoners caught COVID-19 in Texas Delta outbreak, CDC says

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A nurse fills a syringe with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site at a senior's center on March 29, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas

A nurse fills a syringe with a COVID-19 vaccine. A CDC study of an outbreak in a Texas prison in July suggested vaccines protect against serious illness. Photo by Sergio Flores / Getty Images

  • About 70% of fully vaccinated people in a Texas prison caught COVID-19 during an outbreak, the CDC said.

  • The data suggests that while Delta can spread among those vaccinated, the vaccines protect against severe COVID-19.

  • Of the unvaccinated prisoners, 93% caught COVID-19 and one died, the CDC said.

  • See more stories on the Insider business page.

More than two-thirds of fully vaccinated people in a Texas prison caught COVID-19 during a Delta variant outbreak in July, but the vaccines protected against serious illness, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found .

Of 185 fully vaccinated prisoners in the unnamed prison, 129, or about 70%, caught the virus, according to data compiled by the CDC and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. This is a much lower rate than that of unvaccinated prisoners, of whom 39 out of 42 – or about 93% – contracted COVID-19 during the outbreak, according to the study, published in Tuesday’s Weekly Report. CDC on Morbidity and Mortality.

Four people, three of whom were unvaccinated, had to be treated in a hospital, according to the study. An unvaccinated person has died, he said.

Most of the prisoners were white males, and many had received Pfizer’s vaccine at least four months before the outbreak, the data showed.

The study adds to growing evidence that COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of serious illness and hospitalization. Prisons tend to have higher rates of COVID-19 and death due to cramped living conditions and underlying health issues, the CDC said.

Another CDC study this month found that unvaccinated Americans were 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those vaccinated. About 45% of people in the United States are unvaccinated, according to the CDC.

The latest CDC study showed that the Delta variant can be spread in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. “The infectious virus was grown from infected, vaccinated and unvaccinated people,” the study said.

Measures like masks and regular testing are “critical” where physical distancing is “difficult,” even if vaccination rates are high, the CDC said.

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