What Are Breakthrough Cases In Coronavirus That Are On The Rise?

New Delhi: Being fully vaccinated may not necessarily mean a passport to safety. There is growing concern that vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought. A Bloomberg report says scientists from the US have said vaccinated people appear to be contracting the coronavirus at a surprisingly high rate even though vaccination provides powerful protection against the virus.

What is a breakthrough case?

It is a term used when a fully vaccinated person gets infected with the coronavirus. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccine breakthrough cases are normal as no vaccine is 100 per cent effective.

“We have to be humble about what we do know and what we don’t know. There are a few things we can say definitively. One is that this is a hard question to address,” Tom Frieden, a former director of CDC and head of the non-profit Resolve to Save Lives was quoted as saying in the Bloomberg report.

No clarity on how vaccinated people can protect themselves

In the absence of clear public health messaging, vaccinated people are left confused about how to protect themselves. Just how vulnerable they are is a key variable not just for public health officials trying to figure out, say, when booster shots might be needed, but also to inform decisions about whether to roll back reopenings amid a new wave of the virus, NDTV reported.

However, studies giving different pictures of breakthrough infections have emerged. “It’s quite clear that we have more breakthroughs now,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “We all know someone who has had one. But we don’t have great clinical data,” she added.

Delta variant could be responsible

According to a report in The New York Times, with the arrival of the contagious Delta variant, COVID hospitalisations and deaths among vaccinated Americans also may have increased, according to preliminary figures.

Even in India, a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on COVID-infected individuals in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, indicated the prevalence of B.1.617.2 (delta variant) “was not different between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups,” News18 reported.

COVID-appropriate behaviour among vaccinated people

A lot of breakthrough cases can be attributed to change in COVID-appropriate behaviour among fully vaccinated people as many have started to mingle socially or even travel. However, experts still hold the position that vaccinated people infected with the virus were much less likely to be hospitalised, much less likely to need critical care and much less likely to die. Last week, Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium also said while India was reporting a significantly high number of breakthrough infections, the vaccination has shown to be effective against severe illness, hospitalisation and death, News18 reported.