Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April. I'm Oscar Emeras from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America to
Speaker 1: CDC is studying cases of COVID vaccine breakthrough. There have
Speaker 1: been hundreds of cases reported in Florida, Michigan, and Washington
Speaker 1: about people getting infected with coronavirus after being fully vaccinated.
Speaker 1: Experts say that this is expected as no vaccine provides coverage,
Speaker 1: but are also looking into whether these are cases of
Speaker 1: being exposed to high levels of the virus or variants.
Speaker 1: Rob Stein, health correspondent at NPR, joins us for more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Rob pleasure. You know now is
Speaker 1: more and more people are getting vaccinated. You know, the
Speaker 1: numbers are in the millions. Now, we are starting to
Speaker 1: see a lot of these more you know, rarer occurrences. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we've been hearing about things with Johnson and Johnson and
Speaker 1: their vaccine and these very rare instances of blood clots.
Speaker 1: Will see all that figured out. But we're also starting
Speaker 1: to see some breakthrough cases of COVID people who have
Speaker 1: gotten vaccinated and still get COVID nineteen. Still the numbers
Speaker 1: are pretty low, but we're seeing states like Michigan, Florida,
Speaker 1: I think, and Washington report a few hundred cases of this,
Speaker 1: and the CDC is looking into it to see why
Speaker 1: this might be happening. So Rob, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about what we're learning. That's right, as you said,
Speaker 1: you know, the faction has been administered to something more
Speaker 1: than seventy five million people have now been fully vaccinated
Speaker 1: in the United States, and it's unclear how often this
Speaker 1: phenomenon occurs, the vaccine breakthrough, but there have been hundreds
Speaker 1: of cases reported around the country, as you mentioned, and
Speaker 1: so you know, so far most of the cases seem
Speaker 1: like they're pretty mild, but in some cases people do
Speaker 1: get pretty sick, and there have even been some test reported.
Speaker 1: So it's something that's not unexpected, but it's something that
Speaker 1: scientists would like to know more about to figure out
Speaker 1: this way to prevent them happening. In these deaths, as
Speaker 1: you noted in the article, they have been in older
Speaker 1: Americans that you know, we know the virus attacks them
Speaker 1: in a different way. So some of those instances of
Speaker 1: death have been in elderly people. And you know, the
Speaker 1: reason why we talk about these things is you see
Speaker 1: a lot of headlines. They can be misleading sometimes and
Speaker 1: you have to kind of dig into it to see
Speaker 1: how rare it is and how expected it is. You know,
Speaker 1: when we talk about the efficacy of vaccines, especially with
Speaker 1: fiser and maderna, they were up in the high nineties
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, a real world test they said, you know,
Speaker 1: right about but that's not a hundred percent. So these reinfections,
Speaker 1: these breakthroughs are expected. No vaccine is perfect. Every vaccine
Speaker 1: fails in some cases. So nobody was expecting this vaccine
Speaker 1: to be a d percent protective. Are there? In fact?
Speaker 1: You know, the study show that they work really well.
Speaker 1: They seem to protect people against infection about eight percent
Speaker 1: another time, they protect people against getting really sick or
Speaker 1: even dying in excess of percent at a time, but
Speaker 1: that's not a hundred percent of the time, so you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work in every single case. And so what's
Speaker 1: reassuring is that even when people do seem to get
Speaker 1: infected when they've been vaccinated, it does seem like their
Speaker 1: infections tend to be more mile for the most parts,
Speaker 1: so it does perhaps offer them some protection. But as
Speaker 1: you said, you know, it doesn't always work, and so
Speaker 1: it's not just trying to figure out, you know, if
Speaker 1: there is anything that we've done to boost the effectiveness
Speaker 1: even higher. And so there's a variety of possibilities. One
Speaker 1: possibility is maybe some people just don't mount as robust
Speaker 1: immune responses other people. That could be especially to an
Speaker 1: older people who we know don't tend to respond to
Speaker 1: strongly to vaccinations, So it could be why we're seeing
Speaker 1: that happen more in that population. It could be that
Speaker 1: maybe it's the amount of virus that people are exposed
Speaker 1: to initially, If they're exposed to a high amount of virus,
Speaker 1: maybe it's so much that overcomes the protection that the
Speaker 1: vaccine provides. And the third possibility are you know, the variants,
Speaker 1: which we know are for sure working changes, and there's
Speaker 1: some evidence that they may be able to evade the
Speaker 1: vaccines more easily. It's unclear how often that happens, but
Speaker 1: it could be a possibility that that's what's going on
Speaker 1: in some cases where it could be a combination of
Speaker 1: all those factors. Right, Viral load versus variants seems to
Speaker 1: be where you know, a lot of the focus will
Speaker 1: probably be because as people get vaccinated, they feel a
Speaker 1: little more comfortable, maybe not wearing the mask, letting their
Speaker 1: guard down a little bit. But you could be in
Speaker 1: a situation where the viral load is especially high in
Speaker 1: your surroundings, or as you mentioned, the variants constantly changing
Speaker 1: and could be evading some of the vaccines. But you know,
Speaker 1: just to kind of prove the point of some of
Speaker 1: these real world studies that have been done so far,
Speaker 1: there was a study done and you see San Diego
Speaker 1: where they looked at healthcare workers who were fully vaccinated
Speaker 1: and between December February there was thirty six thousand healthcare
Speaker 1: workers they looked at. Less than one percent got reinfected,
Speaker 1: and as you mentioned earlier, the cases were more mild
Speaker 1: than you know if they had not been vaccinated. In
Speaker 1: your story, you did talk about an elderly woman who
Speaker 1: who got reinfected. Tell me a little bit about her story. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: as I said, it's important for it to make that
Speaker 1: if the if these break to infecting, the current the
Speaker 1: stinking right now is they are very very very rare
Speaker 1: and then for most people there is some protection. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I did speak to a woman, her name is ginger
Speaker 1: Eat when she's seventy three. She lives in Dallas, Georgia,
Speaker 1: you know, she got two shots of the fires the vaccine,
Speaker 1: and she thought she was protected and never anything to
Speaker 1: worry about. But she continued to be careful, you know,
Speaker 1: she kept wearing her mask, she kept using hand sanitizer,
Speaker 1: she kept wiping down the grocery carts with wipes. But
Speaker 1: a few weeks after her second though, she started to
Speaker 1: feel a scratchy throat and then she got congested, and
Speaker 1: then she started coughing, and she ended up getting a
Speaker 1: test after she lost her sense of smell, and it
Speaker 1: turned out it came back positive, you know, and she
Speaker 1: was really surprised, and she thought she was good to go.
Speaker 1: But you know, lucky for her, she didn't get that sick.
Speaker 1: She was already sick for about ten days and then
Speaker 1: she recovered. And she's still very grateful that she got
Speaker 1: vaccinated because she had some friends in her church who
Speaker 1: did not and weren't so lucky. They got infected and
Speaker 1: they ended up but dying from COVID. So, you know,
Speaker 1: she's trying to get the message out that these vaccines
Speaker 1: aren't perfect, but it's better to get vaccine event than not.
Speaker 1: But you have to still be careful even if you
Speaker 1: are vaccine definitely, so you know the CDC and you
Speaker 1: know other you know places around the country. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: we're all looking into vaccine breakthrough seeing what's happening, but
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, it's expected you should still get out
Speaker 1: there and go get those vaccines. Yeah. No, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I think it's important also to make distinct machine getting
Speaker 1: infected in reinfectioned. Is no evidence of people who have
Speaker 1: been vaccinally can get infected twice. There's some evidence that
Speaker 1: they could get infected for the first time because the
Speaker 1: vaccines it didn't work in their case, but it is
Speaker 1: you know, the message is consistent that people should even
Speaker 1: if they've been in activated, they shouldn't let the other
Speaker 1: guards that you keep wearing, those masks that you keep
Speaker 1: socially distancing, you know, they have some protection, but they're
Speaker 1: not completely protected. Rob Stein, Health correspondent at NPR. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't
Speaker 1: forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me
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