Breakthrough infection means a fully vaccinated person contracting the virus. In other words, the vaccines failed to fully immunize him/her.
Today, health experts shed light on breakthrough COVID infections in Washington state. Nevertheless, certain questions can't be answered until fall.
Inoculation to prevent contracting COVID is commonplace. But a noteworthy point is that vaccines cannot provide full protection against COVID, which stands to reason why there's been a rash of breakthrough infections since the beginning of the country's vaccination program.
First off, breakthrough infections are not common at all in Washington. From January 17 to July 24, only 0.1 percent of the fully vaccinated in the state tested positive for COVID. And only 52 of the fully vaccinated, around 4 million Washingtonians, have died of COVID to date. 37 of them had pre-existing conditions. Some were octogenarians. And for the others, it's unclear whether they had pre-existing conditions or not.
To date, in the entire country, 26 percent of the vaccinated still got infected.
Some haven't a clue as to whether those asymptomatic infections among the fully vaccinated. Health experts are now suggesting they shouldn't be called "breakthrough cases."
That's because in some cases, the fully vaccinated can still come into contact with the virus, but it doesn't mean he/she contracted it. In that case, the vaccine is doing it job.
The unvaccinated better heed the President advice. Vaccines can literally ward off the deadly virus, thereby lowering the risk of falling victim to COVID, as well as a particular state's and the country's COVID infection rate. A case in point is Massachusetts, which already has around 64 percent of the state's population vaccinated. As the state's vaccination rate started climbing rapidly in June, the average number of cases every week in June and July became less than 100. Although the state is currently seeing a rebound in infections, the situation is not as serious as that in states with very low vaccination rates.
Currently, scientists are working day and night to figure out how often the fully vaccinated unknowingly transmit the virus to the unvaccinated. Substantive information will be available in the fall as the Delta variant continues to play out in the country.
Now, public health officials are fighting tooth and nail to tame what they consider a "lion", as the Biden administration continues to take a hard line on those impugning the vaccines' safety and efficacy.
Still, devoted to eradicating COVID in the U.S., health officials in every state hope to utilize their mantra, "The more people are vaccinated, the less the virus will be in circulation in the population, and the more protected everyone will be", to prod the unvaccinated and conservative Americans into getting inoculated.
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