Long COVID among breakthrough cases?
Need another reason to mask up? People may get long COVID19 after a breakthrough infection.
While vaccines protect from severe disease, we know the vaccinated can still carry the virus (to some extent, we don’t know this number with Delta) and can, but rarely, display symptoms (i.e. breakthrough cases). The vaccine doesn’t seem to provide 100% “sterilizing immunity”. And this is normal. Many of our vaccines don’t provide this level of protection. For example, our measles vaccine protects us from disease, but we can still carry it if we come in contact with it. This is why a measles outbreak, like at Disneyland, can be very dangerous.
One of the pandemic mysteries is whether the vaccinated (and particularly breakthrough cases) can get long COVID19? Yesterday we got our first look.
The New England Journal of Medicine published a study of breakthrough cases among healthcare workers in Israel. Scientists tested 1,497 healthcare workers from December 19, 2020 to April 28, 2021 at the largest medical center in Israel. (Note this is before Delta).
Of the tested workers, 39 breakthrough cases were detected. All were traced back to unvaccinated index cases (either household members or patients). Among the breakthrough cases…
Average age was 42 years
The average time from the second vaccine dose to breakthrough case was 39 days (range: 11-102)
1 person was immunocompromised
What did the breakthrough infections look like?
67% were mild or asymptomatic. No breakthrough cases were hospitalized
The most common symptom was coughing (36%), followed by muscle pain (28%), loss of smell or taste (28%), and fever (21%)
31% had symptoms lasting more than 14 days
19% had symptoms lasting more than 6 weeks (i.e. long COVID). This included loss of smell, cough, fatigue, weakness, difficulty breathing, and/or muscle pain
Nine workers (23%) took more than 10 days off from work. One worker had not yet returned after 6 weeks.
Bottom line:
Breakthrough infections with Alpha were rare. However, 1 in 5 breakthrough cases reported long COVID19, regardless of severity of disease. We need a whole lot more data, but this is a really important first look in understanding the burden of breakthroughs.
We know that Delta is less forgiving than Alpha. If you’re not convinced already, it’s time to mask up.
Love, YLE
Thank you so much for this update! Long COVID has been my biggest fear for myself since we first started hearing about it.
Thank you for your tireless work! If tutoring occurs, and we insure the tutor is vaccinated, should we make sure the tutor also lives with fully vaccinated people only? My vaccinated (Pfizer) daughter will be starting 1-on-1 tutoring for college test prep. They’ll meet for 90 minute weekly, for 8-10 weeks, starting mid Sept, in a small office (I’m not sure how far the door will be open as it’s a test prep center). With Delta, even though masked and vaxxed, they be sitting close to each other. Very scary to me.
Also, I’m definitely concerned about lunchtime even if our district agrees to mask mandate the rest of the day.
Side note: I have the illnesses that Covid mimics (eg dysautonomia) and she may have those genes, though I think we had Covid 1/2020 (I was in hospital) and vaxxed March 2021. (No clue if I’m just sicker or I have long Covid on top of my stuff.)
Thank you!!!