There were 10,262 cases of fully vaccinated people being infected with Covid-19 as of April 30, the CDC said on Tuesday, citing reports from 46 US states and territories. Less than 7% of the patients were hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms, and 1.6%, or 160, died. The median age for all cases was 58, and 63% of those infected were female.
The number of breakthrough infections was equivalent to around 1 in every 10,000 fully vaccinated people, but the total was substantially undercounted. The CDC said reporting of such cases is voluntary and doesn’t include vaccinated people who had no Covid-19 symptoms and weren’t tested. But it also noted that 101 million Americans were fully vaccinated as of April 30, and the vast majority of those inoculated were protected from the virus.
“The number of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths that will be prevented among vaccinated persons will far exceed the number of vaccine breakthrough cases,” the CDC said.
Sequencing data on breakthrough infections suggests that the Covid-19 vaccines being used in the US are about equally effective against various variants of the virus. Around 64% of the cases involved “variants of concern,” such as the UK Covid-19 variant, the CDC said. As of late March and early April, those same variants accounted for approximately 70% of the overall Covid-19 cases in the US, the agency said.
However, the CDC had sequencing data available for only around 5% of breakthrough infections. And as of May 1, the agency stopped monitoring minor breakthrough Covid-19 cases and began focusing only on those leading to hospitalization or death.
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