Concern mounts over Covid-19 infections among vaccinated people

WASHINGTON • People who are vaccinated against Covid-19 appear to be getting the virus at a surprisingly high rate. But exactly how often is not clear, nor is it certain how likely they are to spread the virus to others.

Now, there is growing concern that vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought.

There is a dearth of scientific studies with concrete answers, leaving public policymakers and corporate executives to formulate plans based on fragmented information.

While some are renewing mask mandates or delaying office reopenings, others cite the lack of clarity to justify staying the course.

"We have to be humble about what we do know and what we don't know," said Dr Tom Frieden, a former director of the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the head of the non-profit group Resolve to Save Lives.

"There are a few things we can say definitively. One is that this is a hard question to address."

Without clear public health messaging, vaccinated people are left confused about how to protect themselves.

In lieu of answers, what has emerged is a host of case studies providing somewhat different pictures of breakthrough infections.

Variables - including when the surveys were conducted, whether the Delta variant was present, how much of the population was vaccinated and even what the weather was like at the time - make it hard to compare results and suss out patterns.

"It's quite clear that we have more breakthrough (infections) now," said Professor Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. "We all know someone who has had one. But we don't have great clinical data."

One of the best-known outbreaks among vaccinated people in the US occurred in the small beach town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, as thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people gathered on dance floors and at house parties over the July 4 weekend. About three-quarters of the 469 infections were among vaccinated people.

Authors of a CDC case study said this might mean that vaccinated people were just as likely as the unvaccinated to transmit Covid-19. Even so, they cautioned, as more people are vaccinated, it is natural that they would also account for a larger share of Covid-19 infections.

The incident prompted the CDC to once again urge the vaccinated to mask up in certain settings.

The particular details of that cluster of cases may have made that outbreak especially bad, according to Prof Gandhi. "The rate of mild symptomatic outbreaks in this population was higher because of a lot of indoor activity (including intimacy), rain that weekend, not much outside time and mixture of people with different vaccination status," she said.

A newly released, far larger CDC case study of infections in New York state, meanwhile, found that the number of breakthrough infections has steadily ticked up since May, accounting for almost 4 per cent of cases by the middle of last month.

These researchers cautioned that factors such as easing public health restrictions and the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant might affect the results.

Yet another CDC case study, in Colorado, found that the breakthrough infection rate in one county, Mesa, was significantly higher than in the rest of the state, at 7 per cent versus about 5 per cent.

The report suggested it was, perhaps, because the Delta variant was circulating more widely there, but also noted that the age of patients in Mesa and the lower vaccination rate may have played a role.

Research out of Israel seems to back the idea that protection from severe disease wanes in the months after inoculation, and more recently, that breakthrough cases may eventually lead to an uptick in hospitalisations.

The information is preliminary, and severe breakthrough cases are still rare. But it bolsters the case that some people will need booster shots in the coming months.

Changing behaviour among vaccinated people could be a factor, too, as they return to social gatherings, travel and dining indoors.

All that said, some facts are well established at this point.

Vaccinated people infected with the virus are much less likely to need to go to hospital, much less likely to need intubation and much less likely to die from the illness.

"It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data," Dr Frieden said. "But there is just a lot we don't know."

BLOOMBERG