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Raleigh, North Carolina – Thousands of “breakthrough cases” of the coronavirus, in which fully vaccinated people are infected, have been reported in North Carolina.
The state Department of Health and Human Services reports that 4,659 breakthrough cases have been reported in North Carolina to date, including 321 hospitalizations and 61 deaths. About half of those cases occurred in the past two months, accounting for 5.6% of the total number of infections during that period, according to DHHS figures.
Medical experts attribute the rise in groundbreaking cases to two things: the more contagious Delta variant where the virus is spreading rapidly across the state and the United States, and the company has largely resumed its pre-pandemic activities as the people took off their masks.
“I think a lot of people like me assumed we got past that,” said Melissa Florer-Bixler, who tested positive for the virus even though she was vaccinated in March. “Just because we were vaccinated wasn’t an excuse to let our guard down.”
John Mabe, who was vaccinated in February, was tested for the virus on Tuesday, saying he knew he could still be infected.
“Due to a very mild fever and other symptoms, I thought I would do this to rule out COVID,” Mabe said. “I hope it isn’t.”
Jessica Dixon, infectious disease specialist at WakeMed, said it’s important to remember that getting the vaccine is likely to prevent serious illness or death from the virus in a revolutionary case.
“Post-vaccination infections are still incredibly rare when you look at the full spectrum of infections that exist in the total number of people vaccinated,” Dixon said. “Very few of them are hospitalized, and of those even fewer go to an intensive care unit. So I think this is proof that vaccines really do what they were designed to do.”
Since vaccines began delivery in North Carolina on December 14, more than 580,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus, so groundbreaking cases represent less than 1% of the state total. Likewise, people who have died from breakthrough infections represent less than 1% of the 13,535 coronavirus-related deaths reported in North Carolina to date.
Florer-Bixler said she believed the vaccine helped limit her infection.
“This vaccine saved me from hospitalization, saved me from death [and] protected my 12 year old child, who was not infected, ”she said.
WakeMed sees one to two groundbreaking cases a day, Dixon said, many of whom are asymptomatic people who have gone to hospital for other problems and been tested regularly.
“I always encourage people to get vaccinated, and don’t take the fact that there are breakthrough infections to mean, oh, vaccines don’t work,” she said.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story included statistics on the number of groundbreaking cases reported since late May which DHHS officials said were inflated because they included earlier cases.
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