WISCONSIN (NBC 26) — As COVID-19 cases climb nationwide it’s unclear how many breakthrough COVID infections there truly have been nationwide, as earlier this year changes were made to how data was being tracked by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As of May 1, 2021, the CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause.
The CDC explained this shift would help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.
Click here to read more on COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Case Investigation and Reporting.
According to the CDC, as of July 26, 2021, more than 163 million in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
During the same time, CDC received reports from 49 U.S. states and territories of 6,587 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or who died.
Previous data on all vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC from January–April 2021 are available. Click here.
The CDC still says vaccine breakthrough cases occur in only a small percentage of vaccinated people.
They said to date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in the case demographics or vaccine characteristics among people with reported vaccine breakthrough infections.
CDC says vaccines are effective and recommends that everyone 12 years of age and older get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as they can.
“If someone happens to be one of those cases where they get sick despite being vaccinated against COVID, there’s very significant protection against needing to be hospitalized due to your COVID-19 symptoms or even dying which is the ultimate outcome that we look for to have vaccinations protect against,” said Dr. Brad Burmeister, Bellin Health Emergency Physician.
The CDC says vaccines breakthrough are expected but say COVID-19 vaccines are effective and are a critical tool to bring the pandemic under control. However, no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people. There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.
Dr. Burmeister still urging everyone in the community who hasn’t been vaccinated yet, to get the shot.
“Vaccinated people who end up acquiring COVID-19 have most significantly really minor symptoms. They might have a slight running nose, a very slight cough, but no serious symptoms for the vast majority of people by any means. And actually many people who are testing positive based off a close exposure they had and may have no symptoms all together,” said Dr. Burmeister. “Again, vaccination highly protective against acquiring COVID in the first place and then landing in the hospital and dying. All those outcome measures are protected by vaccinations.”
Here is a look at data across Wisconsin:
“Really all of the clinics and places where we do testing across our region, our positivity rate in Wisconsin, in Northeast Wisconsin of those test that we do is pretty darn high right now. It’s approaching an average that we’ve really haven’t seen since last fall. That really suggest two things. First that COVID is back around in our community. And second, if we are using the public health measure trying to do robust or wide spread testing to try and capture cases and have people quarantine at home, it means that we are probably missing a lot of cases out there of people who have some sort of symptoms and aren’t seeking testing at this time,” Dr. Burmeister said.
And while officials say Wisconsin is not yet experiencing those high surges that resemble what's happening in the South, they say they don't rule out the possibility.
“But we have all the ingredients to see a surge in the future, we don't have enough people vaccinated, Delta variant is in Wisconsin, we've been having a lot of large gatherings recently, whether that'd be the Deer District, State Fair coming up, a lot of concerts," Dr. Ajay Sethi, UW Madison, Associate Professor Population Health Sciences, and faculty director, Master of Public Health program, SMPH. "The steepness of the increase is kind of worrying."
