The novel coronavirus continues to spread through the United States as COVID-19 variants are making their way into the country.

Do fully vaccinated people get COVID-19 still?

Yes. Fully vaccinated people can still get the novel coronavirus, as I wrote for the Deseret News. The vaccines are not 100% effective, so breakthrough cases are expected.

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Dr. Esther Choo, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, said on Yahoo Finance Live that we should expect a higher amount of breakthrough cases as the delta variant spreads and as more people get vaccinated (since the vaccinated people would be the only ones getting COVID-19 in a theoretical society where most of the population is vaccinated).

  • “There’s a lot of talk about how people are getting COVID anyway, even though they’re vaccinated, and that is true and that is expected because there’s no vaccine that’s 100% all the time,” Choo told Yahoo Finance Live.

What fully vaccinated people should consider about COVID-19

Dr. Matt Willis, public health director for Marin County in Northern California, told California local news station KGO-TV that most breakthrough cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic — like having a cold.

  • He said the majority of hospitalized fully vaccinated patients are elderly or immunocompromised. There’s also no link between a specific vaccine and a breakthrough case.
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The vaccine, he said, isn’t perfect. So breakthrough cases can happen.

  • “It’s more like a dimmer switch than it is a light switch. It’s not an on and off. It’s on a continuum of protection,” he said. “And I think that’s an important message because otherwise, people might interpret breakthrough cases as a sign the vaccine is not effective.” 
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