COVID-19 cases more likely after vaccines now: symptoms to expect

• Revolutionary cases will become more common as the more transmissible Delta variant continues to spread.
• But most disease experts still expect COVID-19 to be milder in people who have been vaccinated.
• Two young people who fell ill after being vaccinated described the evolution of their symptoms.

Breakthrough infections, or cases of COVID-19 diagnosed after someone is fully immune, were supposed to be rare – at least that’s what a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested in May. At the time, data indicated that only 0.01% of Americans vaccinated had a breakthrough case from January through April.

But that was before the more transmissible Delta variant became the dominant strain in the United States.

The share of breakthrough infections also inevitably increases as more people get vaccinated – although it is unclear how many of those cases have occurred since the CDC report was released. The agency stopped tracking asymptomatic, mild, or moderate breakthrough cases on May 1.

While current vaccines still protect against Delta, the chances of you knowing someone with a breakthrough case, or developing one yourself, are higher than ever before.

But most disease experts still expect COVID-19 to be milder in those vaccinated, regardless of the variant.

“The variants can cause you to get an infection again, but not serious,” Peter Gulick, associate professor of medicine at Michigan State University, told Insider in June. “It would almost be like getting an infection with

Common cold
or one of those nagging things that makes you sniffle and cough and make you feel a little tired, but nothing bad enough to put you in the hospital or put you on a ventilator. “

Indeed, the COVID Symptom Study – a project that tracks self-reported COVID-19 symptoms via an app – suggests that a headache and a runny nose are two primary indicators of a COVID-19 infection in people vaccinated with the virus. United Kingdom, followed by sneezing, sore throat and loss of smell. People vaccinated in the study also reported fewer overall symptoms over a shorter period of time than those who had not received a vaccine.

Insider spoke to two young people who recently recovered from mild breakthrough infections to see how their symptoms progressed.

32-year-old man suffered from fatigue and shortness of breath

Sam Reider, a musician who lives in San Francisco, was fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s vaccine in mid-April. (New research suggests Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine is 88% effective against symptomatic Delta’s COVID-19 – compared to 95% against the original strain.)

In mid-June, Reider hosted a music camp a few hours outside of town. Of the 50 or so people present, he said, most were older children who had been vaccinated. A handful of unvaccinated children under 12 wore masks.

But Reider got sick anyway. His first symptoms – exhaustion and headaches – were like “that feeling of being super jetlagged after an international flight,” he said. Soon after, he began to feel congested and short of breath – symptoms that lasted about two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19.

“Basically any sort of exercise or even talking on the phone was tough the first week,” Reider said. “At the end of my sentences, I would need to slow down and stop, take a few deep breaths.”

Wilfredo Lee / AP

Reider has also lost his sense of taste and smell, which is just starting to return more than a month after the onset of his symptoms. Her most serious symptom, fatigue, happened sporadically.

“Out of the blue, I would just need to lay down,” Reider said.

In early July, however, he started to feel better. He has now returned to normal exercise, including bike rides and a six mile hike.

He said getting sick after being fully immunized was still a bit traumatic.

“After a year and a half of it all, coming out confident with the vaccine and then getting it – it was just overwhelming,” Reider said. Still, he added, “it was nowhere near as bad as the times I had severe pneumonia or the flu or a cold.”

30-year-old man had a nighttime fever and lost his sense of smell

Ryan Forrest, who lives in Midland Park, New Jersey, received the single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson in late March, then attended an indoor wedding of about 150 people on July 1.

He woke up on July 5 “feeling a little hazy,” he said. That night, Forrest developed a fever and woke up sweating. The next day, her rapid COVID-19 test came back positive – around the same time that stiffness and a runny nose set in.

“I’ve never had more than two symptoms at the same time,” Forrest said, adding, “The runny nose turned into a stuffy nose, which then turned into a headache, then my body aches were gone and I had this dry cough. “

The most persistent symptom, he said, was loss of smell (he never lost his sense of taste). But none of the symptoms were unbearable, he added, and all of them went away in about two weeks.

Breakthrough infections could be more frequent with Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine than Pfizer’s or Moderna’s because the efficacy of this vaccine is lower: J & J’s vaccine was found to reduce moderate COVID-19 risk and severe by 66% worldwide. But South African researchers recently found that among people who received the J&J vaccine, 94% of breakthrough infections were mild, including those caused by Delta.

Even though he fell ill, Forrest said, he is thankful that the vaccine apparently protected his parents, who drove in the car with him for an hour and a half the day before he tested positive.

“This is the important part for me,” he said. “I don’t care how sick I got until I give it to my dad, who is 67 years old.”