Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said we should expect COVID-19 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated Americans.
Are breakthrough COVID-19 cases common?
Walensky told CNN on Thursday night that COVID-19 breakthrough cases should be expected with the vaccine, which isn’t 100% effective.
- “I think we all have to recognize that with 164 million people who are vaccinated, we should expect tens of thousands, perhaps, of breakthrough infections,” she said.
- “Those breakthrough infections have mild illness. They are staying out of the hospital. They are not dying, and I think that that’s the most important thing to understand,” Walensky told CNN.
What happens to fully vaccinated people?
New data from the CDC revealed that 99.999% of fully vaccinated Americans did not have a breakthrough COVID-19 case that led to hospitalization or death.
- The CDC data — which came before the delta variant surge — said there were 6,587 COVID-19 breakthrough cases among 163 million fully vaccinated, as I wrote for the Deseret News.