[ad_1]
While some groundbreaking cases among those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 are inevitable, they are unlikely to result in hospitalization or death. But an important question about the breakthrough infection that remains unanswered is: Can vaccinees develop what is called long-term COVID?
The long COVID refers to a set of symptoms – such as severe fatigue, brain fog, headaches, muscle aches, and problems sleeping – that can persist for weeks or months after the end of the day. active infection. The syndrome is poorly understood, but studies suggest that between 10% and 30% of adults who catch the virus can suffer from a lengthy COVID, including those who have had only mild illness or no symptoms.
Sign up for the New York Times The Morning newsletter
But the vast majority of data collected over the long COVID concerns the unvaccinated population. The risk of developing long-term COVID for fully vaccinated people who become infected after vaccination has not been studied.
While preliminary research suggests that it’s actually possible that a breakthrough case could result in symptoms that can linger for weeks or even months, there are still more questions than answers. What percentage of breakthrough cases result in persistent symptoms? How many of these people are recovering? Are the symptoms that persist after a breakthrough infection as severe as those that occur in the unvaccinated?
“I just don’t think there is enough data,” said Dr. Zijian Chen, medical director of the Center for Post-COVID Care at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. ” It is too early to tell. The population of people who get sick after vaccination is not that high at the moment, and there is no good follow-up mechanism for these patients. “
A recent study of Israeli health workers published in the New England Journal of Medicine offers insight into the risk of COVID long after a breakthrough infection. Of the 1,497 fully immunized health workers, 39 of them – about 2.6% – developed breakthrough infections. (All workers were thought to be infected after contact with an unvaccinated person, and the study was conducted before the delta variant became dominant.)
While most breakthrough cases were mild or asymptomatic, seven of 36 workers followed at six weeks (19%) still had persistent symptoms. These long COVID symptoms included a mixture of prolonged loss of smell, persistent cough, fatigue, weakness, labored breathing, or muscle pain.
But the study’s authors caution against drawing too many conclusions from the research. The sample size – only seven patients – is small. And the research was designed to study antibody levels in infected people, said Dr Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the infectious disease epidemiology unit at Sheba Medical Center. It was not designed to study the risk of COVID long after a breakthrough infection.
“That was not the scope of this article,” Regev-Yochay said. “I don’t think we have an answer for that.
Even so, the fact that one in five healthcare workers who have had breakthrough infections still have persistent symptoms after six weeks appears to be the first indication from a peer-reviewed study that a long COVID is possible after a breakthrough infection.
“People said to me, ‘You are fully vaccinated. Why are you so careful? ‘ Said Dr. Robert M. Wachter, professor and director of the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “I’m still on the side of I don’t want to have COVID. I don’t want to get a breakthrough infection.
Wachter said that despite the many limitations of the Israeli study, the data offers more evidence that those vaccinated should continue to take reasonable precautions to avoid the virus.
“I’m going to take it at face value that one in five people, six weeks after a revolutionary case, continued to feel lousy,” Wachter said. “It’s enough to make me want to wear two masks when I go to the grocery store, which isn’t that heavy anyway.”
The fact that the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only monitors post-vaccine infections that lead to hospitalization or death complicates the study of peak infections. Although the CDC continues to study breakthrough infections in several large cohorts, the lack of data on all breakthrough cases remains a source of frustration among scientists and patient advocacy groups.
“It’s very frustrating not to have data at this point in the pandemic to find out what is happening to groundbreaking cases,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine who conducts long COVID studies. “If a mild breakthrough infection turns into a long COVID, we don’t have a clue of that number. “
Diana Berrent, founder of Survivor Corps, a Facebook group for those affected by COVID-19 that has approximately 171,000 members, conducted an informal survey and found 24 people who said they had persistent symptoms after a breakthrough infection. This is not a scientific sample and the cases have not been validated, but the poll shows the need for more data on groundbreaking cases, Berrent said.
“You can’t extrapolate it to the general population, but it’s a very strong signal that the CDC must demand the reporting of every revolutionary case,” Berrent said. “We cannot know what we are not counting.”
But some experts predict that the wave of new cases caused by the spread of the delta variant will unfortunately lead to more groundbreaking cases in the months to come. Chen said it will be several months before patients with COVID along with a breakthrough infection are enrolled in studies.
“We are waiting for these patients to show up at our doors,” Chen said.
Despite the lack of data, one thing is clear: getting the vaccine will reduce the risk of becoming infected and contracting a long COVID, said Athena Akrami, a neuroscientist at University College London who has collected and published data on nearly 4,000 long-term COVID patients after developing a long-term COVID. herself after a March 2020 fight with COVID-19.
“It’s simple math,” Akrami said. “If you reduce infections, the likelihood of a long COVID will automatically drop. “
© 2021 The New York Times Company
[ad_2]
Source link