Coronavirus Breakthrough Cases Not So Bad After All? New Research

CONNECTICUT — The Connecticut Department of Public Health is reporting that as of Thursday, it has identified 15,089 breakthrough cases of COVID-19 in the state, up 670 from last week.

The percentage of breakthrough cases in the state has been growing weekly: Out of the 1,662 cases of COVID-19 recorded by the DPH in the past seven days, 510, or 30.7 percent, were among people who had already been completely vaccinated, up just over 3 percent compared to the previous week.

Any good news? New research indicates that breakthrough cases may not be quite the boogeyman immunologists first feared.

Health officials have already reported that, symptomatically, breakthrough cases of the coronavirus tend to be pale shadows of the COVID-19 experience for the unvaccinated. After the patients recover from the shock ("Wait, how can I have COVID? I'm fully vaccinated!"), they're usually left with symptoms resembling a common cold, if any symptoms at all.

The more serious concerns in the health community have centered around the transmissivity of the virus. You know the drill: You're vaccinated, you let your guard (and mask) down, you asymptomatically catch COVID-19, and then you transmit the disease to someone who is unvaccinated.

But according to new research out of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, that virus transmitted by the fully vaccinated is different from the spiky doomball we've come to know and fear over the past 19 months.

UC immunologist Ross Kedl told NPR that's because vaccinated people have already made antibodies to the coronavirus. Those antibodies may not prevent infection, but they still "should be coating that virus with antibody and therefore helping prevent excessive downstream transmission." A coronavirus covered in antibodies is not as infectious as the garden variety, according to the UC scientists.

Kedl's team is not the only one publishing data that supports the idea of a vaccinated virus losing much of its retransmission mojo. Working with the infamously contagious delta variant, researchers in The Netherlanders have concluded that "rare vaccine breakthrough infections occur, but infectious virus shedding is reduced in these cases."

Of the 2,375,355 persons who have completed their vaccine series, 0.64 percent of Connecticut’s fully vaccinated persons have contracted the virus, up 0.03 percent from last week's report from the Department of Public Health.

One hundred and forty-four coronavirus-associated deaths have occurred among the 15,089 fully vaccinated people. These deaths represent 12 percent of all COVID-19 deaths since Feb. 9, 2021, up 1 percent from last week's report.

Nationwide, as of Oct. 12, 7,718 fully vaccinated people have died as a result of the virus, up from 6,617 the previous week. Eighty-five percent of them have been age 65 or older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Forty Connecticut residents have died from COVID-19 associated illnesses over the past seven days, up from last week's report of 38 deaths.

Coronavirus-associated deaths have been on the decline across the country since Sept. 16, mirroring Connecticut's own arc. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting 1,820 new deaths on Oct. 12, with a 7-day moving average of 1,252.

The charts above and below show the "relative risk," or the difference in risk when comparing rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons.

The latest data show unvaccinated residents have an 11-times higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, compared to the vaccinated. Their risk of hospitalization is 74 times greater.

Although coronavirus deaths in Connecticut have declined markedly since February, it is important to note that death — and hospitalization — rates have consistently been higher among unvaccinated persons compared to fully vaccinated persons.

According to the latest weekly release of statewide data from DPH, 2,374,148 residents out of 3,105,947 eligible people have been fully vaccinated, yielding a 76 percent vaccination rate statewide. Connecticut's vaccination rate is the third highest in the U.S., behind Vermont and Massachusetts.

Predictably, residents in the eastern area of the state, with the highest coronavirus infection rates, are also least likely to be fully-vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the data released by DPH. Of all Connecticut municipalities, only Canaan has a fully vaccinated population.

As of Thursday, those residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19 include more than 95 percent of those over the age of 65, 90 percent of those between 55-64, 82 percent of those between 45-54, 82 percent of those between 35-44, 75 percent of those between 25-34, 70 percent of those between 18-24, 79 percent of those between 16-17, and 69 percent of those between 12-15.

The number of state residents hospitalized with the coronavirus has dropped over the past week, by two beds. There are 232 Connecticut residents in health care facilities suffering from COVID-19, as of Friday.

Most of those hospitalized (72) are in New Haven County.

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