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Unvaccinated people currently account for the majority of new cases of COVID-19 in the United States, but a small proportion of cases involve people who have been vaccinated; these cases are known as breakthrough infections. But is there a difference in how often people get breakthrough infections depending on the vaccine they received?
The short answer is, we don’t know exactly, but there are some clues in the data. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine appears to have breakthrough infection rates higher than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but this was expected based on the results of clinical trials. Some very early clues show a slightly lower rate of breakthrough infections with the Moderna vaccine than with the Pfizer vaccine, but this early finding is based on data from a few million people from just two locations and therefore may not represent the overall picture of the country. .
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Since no vaccine is 100% effective, breakthrough infections are expected from the onset of vaccine to take out. In clinical trials, approximately 0.04% of people who received the Pfizer vaccine were infected with SARS-CoV-2, compared to about 0.07% with Moderna and 0.59% with Johnson & Johnson.
Now that vaccines are licensed, scientists have the opportunity to track the number of groundbreaking infections occurring in the real world, beyond clinical trials. When breakouts do occur, most people have mild symptoms or even get sick, and a small percentage develop serious illness, require hospitalization, or die, current data suggests.
The recent increase in the highly transmissible delta variant, however, could increase the risk of breakthrough infections. For example, a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published on August 6 as Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), revealed that the delta variant increased in Mesa County, Colorado between May and June; at the same time, the county had a “significantly higher” proportion of breakthrough cases compared to other counties in Colorado, where the Delta was less common.
Much of the responsibility for reporting breakthrough infections is now with states, and of the 25 or so states that report breakthrough infections, most do not yet provide data on the number of cases linked to each brand of vaccine, Live Science found in a state health research. department websites.
However, Oklahoma and Washington, DC are making this information public. These data could provide ‘early signals’ about vaccine efficacy, particularly as new variants emerge, DC Health’s website says. That said, there are many limitations: the data sets are small, each vaccine has been given to a different number of people, and the timing of the doses makes it difficult to interpret the data.
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Yet, as of August 1, more than 299,000 DC residents had been fully immunized, according to DC Health data. Of these people, nearly 151,000 received the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, approximately 124,700 received the two-dose Moderna vaccine, and approximately 24,000 received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
In this population, the highest breakthrough rate was observed among those who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine: 77 people, or 0.32% of the approximately 24,000 beneficiaries. The second highest rate was seen among Pfizer beneficiaries, of whom 308 people, or 0.2%, tested positive for the virus. Finally, 161, or 0.13%, of Moderna beneficiaries contracted a revolutionary infection.
These figures include asymptomatic, mild, moderate and severe cases. Some people with asymptomatic or mild infections may not be tested, so their cases would be missed, meaning it is likely an undercoverage of breakthroughs.
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Oklahoma reported similar results.
As of August 2, more than 1.5 million Oklahoma people had been fully vaccinated, according to a Oklahoma State Department of Health report. About 817,000 were beaten by Pfizer, 674,000 received Moderna and 102,000 received Johnson & Johnson. Again, Johnson & Johnson beneficiaries showed the highest rate of breakthrough cases, with 215, or 0.21%, testing positive for the virus; 1,468 Pfizer beneficiaries, or 0.17% of the total, contracted a breakthrough infection; and 831 Moderna recipients, or 0.12%, tested positive for the virus.
These snapshots of Oklahoma and DC likely provide an incomplete picture of breakthrough cases in each region, however, and as of yet, it’s unclear whether the patterns seen are representative of the country as a whole. To accurately compare vaccine brands, especially with the ever-prevalent delta variant, we just need more data, said Robert Darnell, a medical scientist at Rockefeller University in New York. National Geographic.
That said, other preliminary research also suggests that Moderna’s vaccine offers more protection against the delta variant than Pfizer’s, which may help explain the differences in breakthrough rates, Reuters reported. A study, published Aug. 8 on the Preprint Database bioRxiv, included more than 50,000 patients in the Mayo Clinic health system and found that the actual effectiveness of the Moderna vaccine increased from 86% to 76% between January and July, when delta gained prominence. In the same time window, Pfizer’s efficiency increased from 76% to 42%.
However, this study has not yet been peer reviewed, so the results have yet to be confirmed.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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