A series of recent coronavirus infections among vaccinated athletes and government staffers has focused attention on an apparent rise in so-called
But as the pandemic lingers and more transmissible variants of the virus circulate widely, it's expected that the number of breakthrough infections will rise. Yet studies have shown that most cases in vaccinated people are mild — if a person develops symptoms at all — and research indicates that vaccines still provide strong protection, even against the known variants.
“If you have a lot of good antibodies, they are potentially able to bind to the virus before it can cause trouble, and that can mitigate or decrease your odds of getting sick,” said Dr. Robert Darnell, a senior physician and biochemist at Rockefeller University in New York. A health worker administers a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination at a mobile vaccination clinic in Los Angeles on July 16, 2021.
"It may be that for the vast majority of vaccinated people who get infected, they just don't make enough virus to infect another person," said Dr. Janko Nikolich-Žugich, an immunologist and professor of medicine at the University of Arizona. Rasmussen said higher rates of hospitalization and death in older adults aren't surprising because older people are generally more vulnerable to serious illness from Covid-19.In Israel, where 80 percent of people 16 and older have been fully vaccinated, researchers studied 152 breakthrough cases in which patients were hospitalized and found that most involved people with underlying conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes and congestive heart failure.
"If we started to see ICUs filling up with people who are fully vaccinated, that would be an indication that the vaccines are no longer effective," she said.
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