COVID cases after vaccination are ‘not surprising’

“Revolutionary” COVID-19 infections after vaccination are taken “seriously,” Dr Anthony Fauci said Friday as federal officials expressed concern over the increase in coronavirus cases in the United States.

“When it comes to the groundbreaking cases of people who were vaccinated and ultimately contracted an infection, this is obviously something we take seriously and are following closely,” said top infectious disease expert from the country during the White House virtual coronavirus briefing.

Fauci explained that some breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated individuals are not entirely uncommon with any vaccination effort.

“You’ll see breakthrough infections in any vaccination when you immunize literally tens, tens and tens of millions of people, so in some ways it’s not surprising,” Fauci said.

Fauci said that “one of the important things to do and do is sequence the genome of the virus which is the breakthrough virus” so as to know whether the infection was from the original viral strain or from one of the COVID. -19 variants.

“It would be very important to see if they broke with the wild type virus, which would indicate a real decrease in immunity or if they broke with one of the variants, which would be much more explainable if you don’t have enough cross-reactivity, ”he said.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added, “So all of this information will be collected and we will be very informative about the type and frequency of breakthroughs that we will see.”

Fauci’s comments come after Minnesota this week reported 89 groundbreaking infections among people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

None of them were among the 6,798 deaths from COVID-19 in Minnesota, including the nine deaths reported on Wednesday, and doctors noted that even those who had been hospitalized after being vaccinated had milder illness, said reported the Star Tribune.

Idaho health officials also said this week that there have been fewer than 100 cases of groundbreaking COVID-19 reported, according to KTVB.

Meanwhile, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said during the briefing that the United States averages about 57,000 cases of COVID-19 per day and that the seven-day average of cases increased by 7%.

The most recent seven-day average of hospitalizations in the United States for the coronavirus was around 4,700 – a “slight increase” from the previous seven-day period, Walensky said.

Additionally, the COVID-19 death rate in the country continues to “hover” at around 1,000 per day, Walensky said.

“I remain deeply concerned about this trajectory,” she said. “We have seen cases and hospital admissions go from historic declines to stagnations and then to increases.”

“We know from previous surges that if we don’t control things now, there is real potential for the epidemic curve to fly off again,” Walensky said, urging Americans to “take this very moment. seriously.”

Over the past two weeks, the United States has “systematically” inoculated approximately 2.5 million Americans per day and the country is on track to meet President Biden’s new immunization target of 200 million vaccines administered. During his first 100 days in office, the White House’s coronavirus response said coordinator Jeff Zients.

“With 200 million hits in the first 100 days, more than half of all adult Americans will have received at least one stroke by April 29,” Zients said.

“No one even considered achieving this goal a few months ago,” he said. “But it is now possible thanks to the aggressive action we have taken.”

As of Friday, 71% of people 65 and older had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to Zients.

“This is important because the elderly unfortunately account for 80% of deaths from COVID,” he said.

Overall, Zients said, more than one in three adults has received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Since vaccination efforts began in mid-December, more than 47.4 million Americans, or 14.3% of the population, have been fully immunized.

“It’s clear that there is a case for optimism, but there is not a case for relaxation,” Zients said. “Now is not the time to let your guard down.”