Inevitably, some people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will still get a “breakthrough” infection, Anthony Fauci
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A breakthrough infection is when a person contracts an illness despite being vaccinated against it. Fauci noted that there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of fully vaccinated people who become infected with COVID-19.
The key is to compare the small number of infections to the tens and eventually hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated, Fauci said.
“We see this in all vaccines, in clinical trials, in the real world,” Fauci said during a White House briefing. “No vaccine is 100 percent efficacious, or effective, which means you will always see breakthrough infections regardless of the efficacy of your vaccine.”
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that the best example of breakthrough infections is the flu vaccine. The flu virus mutates quickly and even during a good year, the shot is only 40 to 60 percent effective.
However, even if a vaccine does not protect against infection, it often protects against serious illness.
“If you get vaccinated, you are undoubtedly less likely to get the flu. But even if you get the flu and get sick, vaccination can reduce the severity and duration of the illness and get you out of trouble,” Fauci said.
During the briefing, Fauci also addressed an Israeli preprint study which made headlines over the weekend, seemingly finding that the B.1.351 variant can somewhat evade protection against the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
“With all due respect to my Israeli friends, I think that preprint was as confusing as it were, as it were,” Fauci said. “The only thing that isn’t confusing is that two doses are really good” if you want to be fully protected.
Fauci said the study made it sound like people who received two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine were more likely to be infected with the B.1.351 variant than people who were not vaccinated at all.
Fauci said the protection of the vaccine means that in the unlikely event that an infection breaks through, it will likely be the “more difficult variety,” but “that doesn’t mean you’re more likely to get it.”