Post-vaccination “breakthrough” COVID-19 infections are being taken “seriously,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci Friday when federal officials expressed concern about rising coronavirus cases in the US.
“With regard to the breakthrough cases of people who have been vaccinated and eventually contracted an infection, this is of course something we take seriously and monitor closely,” said the country’s top infectious disease expert during the White’s virtual coronavirus briefing. House.
Fauci explained that some breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated individuals with some vaccination effort are not entirely uncommon.
“You’ll see breakthrough infections with every vaccination when you vaccinate literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people, so in some ways that’s not surprising,” Fauci said.
Fauci said that “one of the important things that will be done, and must be done, is to sequence the genome of the virus that is the breakthrough virus” to find out if the infection was from the original virus strain or one of the viruses. COVID- 19 variants.
“It would be very important to see if they broke through with the wild-type virus, which would indicate a real decrease in immunity, or if it broke with one of the variants, which would be much easier to explain if you don’t have enough cross-reactivity, “he said.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added, “So all that information will be collected and will be very informative to us about the type and frequency of breakthroughs that we will see.”
Fauci’s comments come after Minnesota reported 89 breakthrough infections this week among people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
None of them were among the 6,798 COVID-19 fatalities in Minnesota, including the nine deaths reported Wednesday, and doctors noted that even those hospitalized after being vaccinated had milder illness, the report said. Star Tribune.
Health officials in Idaho also said this week that fewer than 100 breakthrough cases of COVID-19 have been reported, according to KTVB.
Meanwhile, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during the briefing that the US has an average of 57,000 COVID-19 cases per day and that the seven-day average of cases is up 7 percent.
The most recent seven-day average of US hospital admissions for the coronavirus was about 4,700 – a “slight increase” from the previous seven-day period, Walensky said.
In addition, the number of COVID-19-related deaths in the country continues to “hover” around 1,000 per day, Walensky said.
“I remain very concerned about this trajectory,” she said. “We’ve seen cases and hospital admissions move from historical declines to stagnation to increases.”
“We know from past peaks that if we don’t have things under control now, there is a real potential for the epidemic curve to rise again,” Walensky said, urging Americans, “please take this moment very seriously. to take.”
Over the past two weeks, the US has “consistently” vaccinated about 2.5 million Americans a day and the country is on track to meet President Biden’s new vaccination target of 200 million injections delivered in his first 100 days in office, White House Coronavirus Response. Coordinator Jeff Zients said.
“With 200 million shots in the first hundred days, more than half of all adult Americans will have gotten at least one shot by April 29,” Zients said.
“No one even considered achieving this goal a few months ago,” he said. “But it is now possible because of the aggressive action we have taken.”
According to Zients, 71 percent of people over 65 have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine since Friday.
“That’s important because, unfortunately, seniors account for 80 percent of COVID deaths,” he said.
Overall, Zients said more than one in three adults has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Since the vaccination efforts began in mid-December, more than 47.4 million Americans or 14.3 percent of the population have been fully vaccinated.
“Clearly there is reason for optimism, but there is no reason to relax,” said Zeints. “Now is not the time to lower our guard.”