Last week the Oklahoma State Department of Health had identified 258 "vaccine breakthrough cases." Even when you are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, there is a small chance of catching the virus. Such cases are known as “vaccine breakthrough cases,’’ and although they are rare, they are to be expected because no vaccine is 100 percent effective.
This news was followed today with a tweet from Eric Feigl-Ding, Epidemiologist & Health Economist. He stated that the Oklahoma State Department of Health announced that in a cluster of 17 cases of the new B16172 variant, 3 of the positive cases were in fully vaccinated people. Another 2 had already had one vaccine dose.
This new B16172 variant is also known as the India variant as it was first detected in India. The Chief COVID office for the University of Oklahoma said that this variant is about six times more resistant than other variants to the antibodies generated by vaccines. It is also spreading faster and seems to have greater resistance to the antibodies generated by the vaccines.
Oklahoma State Epidemiologist Jolianne Stone said that of the 17 cases of the new variant that none were related to travel. 13 of the cases were associated with Cleveland County, and fortunately, none had to be hospitalized.
Breakthrough case statistics
The CDC last issued statistics on breakthrough cases on April 26.
There had been 95 million vaccinations at that stage, and just 9,245 of those people later returned a positive COVID test result. Of those, sadly, 112 died due to COVID.
Vaccines remain effective
Despite these results, experts are not alarmed. Recently when 9 members of the New York Yankees who were fully vaccinated tested positive, experts suggested this was a good sign.
Dr. Costi Sifri, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at the University of Virginia, said, "It's preventing serious infections in those staff and players with the Yankees. Those infections that occurred, the so-called breakthrough infections, importantly were for the most part mild to moderate infections."
The vaccinations prevented people from getting seriously ill or dying, which proved the effectiveness of the vaccines. University of Melbourne professor Tony Blakely said the statistics are just basic math. Even if a vaccine is 95 percent effective, it will still mean that one-in-20 people who are vaccinated could still contract and spread the virus, even if they don’t get sick or die.
“No vaccine is perfect. But you’ve got much less chance of catching COVID and dying.”University of Melbourne professor Tony Blakely
Oklahoma health officials have urged people to continue to get vaccinated. As of yesterday, 1.3 million people in Oklahoma had been fully vaccinated, representing 32.7% of the population. Oklahoma is slightly down on the national average- 38.2% of Americans were fully vaccinated.