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A federal investigation into a COVID-19 outbreak earlier this month in a Massachusetts county that is home to Cape Cod found that 74% of 469 infections were in people who had been vaccinated, a finding that raises questions about the prevalence of infections with breakthrough.
The research, released Friday afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the latest indication that people who are fully vaccinated may need to revert to wearing masks, social distancing, and other measures of attenuation as the more infectious delta variant tears in the United States
Earlier this week, the CDC changed its stance and began calling on people, even those who are vaccinated, to wear masks again in indoor public places in areas of the country with “high” or “significant” levels. »Community transmission.
The public health agency also recommended that all K-12 students and educators wear masks indoors. At the time, little data was available to the public to support its position.
However, it appears that the CDC is increasingly concerned about the ability of the virus to move with travelers and in crowded gatherings, even in low-risk areas of the United States.
“The results of this survey suggest that even jurisdictions without substantial or high transmission of COVID-19 could consider expanding prevention strategies,
including masking in indoor public places, regardless of vaccination status, given the potential risk of infection when attending large public gatherings that include travelers from many regions with different levels of transmission, ”said wrote the authors.
The CDC described several large public gatherings that brought people from across the United States to Barnstable County in Massachusetts from July 3 to 17. People started testing positive for COVID-19 around July 6, and many cited frequenting crowded indoor and outdoor bars, restaurants and eateries. homes, especially in Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape Cod Peninsula.
Here’s what we know about breakthrough infections:
• 274, or 79%, of fully vaccinated people who tested positive for the virus were symptomatic.
• Of the 133 specimens that were sequenced in this outbreak, 119, or 89%, were from the delta variant and one sample had the delta AY.3 subline.
• Four of the five people hospitalized in this outbreak were vaccinated. Nobody died.
• 301, or 87%, of those vaccinated and tested positive were men; their median age was 42 years.
• Of those who reported breakthrough infections, 159, or 46%, obtained BioNTech SE BNTX,
–Pfizer Inc. PFE,
vaccine; 131, or 38%, had received MNA from Moderna Inc.,
shoot; and 56, or 16%, had received the Johnson & Johnson JNJ,
vaccine.
Earlier this week, CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky also said new data revealed that people vaccinated and tested positive for the virus can carry the same viral load as people unvaccinated and tested positive for the virus. virus. This research found that cycle cutoff (Ct) values in samples from 127 fully vaccinated and 84 unvaccinated people were similar.
“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and have raised concerns that, unlike other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta could transmit the virus,” Walensky said in a separate statement Friday. “This finding is concerning and was a crucial finding leading to the CDC’s updated mask recommendation.”
There is little data available to date on breakthrough infections.
In May, the CDC said there had been fewer than 10,000 groundbreaking cases among the roughly 95 million Americans who were fully vaccinated at that time. However, data from Los Angeles County revealed that as of June, a fifth of all new cases were breakthrough infections among those vaccinated.
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