Doctor Is In by Dr. Adil Manzoor OP/ED
Ever heard the popular saying, ‘never say never?’ Well, our article today is going to be very much on that theme.
The consensus now is that getting a vaccine essentially eliminates your risk of getting the coronavirus. I mean, that’s the whole point of getting a vaccine. There has been so much work over the last few months to ensuring that a vaccine is available for use. Much of that work has yielded unprecedented success, with vaccines being available for use today.
Essentially, what the coronavirus vaccines do is ramp up the body’s immune response to the coronavirus before even getting the virus. This way, when the body eventually encounters the virus, it is better equipped to fight it. And for a novel vaccine, released just around a year after the coronavirus first hit the US, the results have been superb.
This effectiveness is undoubtedly due in part to the new mRNA technology, which doesn’t actually see a dead or weakened strain of the virus injected to the body, as is common with most viruses. What I’m getting at is, the coronavirus vaccine is very effective and safe, and that’s what the general population believes.
This is why it came as a huge shock to Robin Hauser, who got the virus after being vaccinated. And not just him now, but there have been a few cases around the country where people test positive for the virus after being fully vaccinated. Emphasis on fully now, because taking one shot of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine only guarantees about 50-80% protection from the virus.
Even after getting both vaccine doses, scientists estimate that it takes two weeks before the person can actually be said to be fully immunized from the virus. There have been reports of people getting the virus after taking one shot, and this isn’t too out of place. But this isn’t what happened with Hauser and many others, as they got the virus more than two weeks after getting their second vaccine shot. As you may imagine, this led to few eyebrows being raised in the public space, particularly among those that never supported the vaccine in the first place.
So, can you actually get the coronavirus even after being fully vaccinated? Yes, absolutely, and cases like this are referred to as breakthrough cases. While these cases are extremely rare, they are possible. Breakthrough cases aren’t peculiar just to the coronavirus, though. Virtually all vaccines don’t 100% guarantee protection from infection. The chances of getting the infection are, in reality, extremely low but not absolutely absent. Take the coronavirus, for instance; your chances of getting the virus after getting vaccinated is less than 0.5%.
But even if there’s a 0.0001% chance, it means infection may still arise. And that’s the case with Hauser and several others. But there is really nothing to fear on this front, though, because the chances of hospitalization or death are practically zero.
Aside from the individual’s immune system not getting totally primed to fight the infection, there are still other reasons breakthrough cases may occur, like poor vaccine administration. This is common in underdeveloped regions where the vaccines are in poor condition before administration due to poor storage, or they are administered wrongly. Another possible cause of breakthrough cases is a new strain or variant of the virus, as is common now in some parts of the world.
Most of the people against vaccination usually argue that if you can still get the virus after being vaccinated, why get vaccinated in the first place? To start with, in a study conducted among California healthcare workers, only 7 out of 14,990 vaccinated people got the virus. That’s a whopping 0.04%! Yes, 0.04%. This is pretty low, I’d say. So, it’s not like breakthrough cases are common occurrences.
Then again, we are in a fight to eradicate the coronavirus as soon as possible. That isn’t possible if cases keep rising, and vaccination is a tested and trusted way of keeping cases low. There’s also the fact that hospitalizations and deaths are practically eradicated with vaccinations, even in breakthrough cases.
To summarize, the coronavirus may still arise after full vaccination, albeit unlikely, but these breakthrough cases pose minimal risk of hospitalization, death, or even showing symptoms in some cases.
All of these further reinforce the pleas of health workers to still maintain coronavirus guidelines in populated areas after vaccination. Stay safe.
This article was written by Dr. Adil Manzoor DO, a Board Certified Internist & Board Eligible Pediatrician, who works as a Hospitalist, and Emergency Room Physician. He is also the current President of Garden State Street Medicine, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to provide free preventive and acute urgent care services for the homeless. He is also the co-founder of his own unique medical practice Mobile Medicine NJ.
References
· https://www.google.com/amp/s/feeds.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/coronavirus-after-vaccination.html%3f_amp=true
· https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effectiveness/why-measure-effectiveness/breakthrough-cases.html
· https://www.washington post.com/health/how-did-that-happen-catching-covid-19-even-after-being-vaccinated/2021/04/23/a31983a6-a21b-11eb-a774-7b47ceb36ee8_story.html
