COVID breakthrough

According to the CDC’s website, statistics on COVID vaccine breakthrough infections are probably significantly ‘under-estimated’ as reporting on the issue is voluntary. All of which raises a number of questions governments need to answer. Firstly, what is the plan if it turns out that a 70 to 80% vaccination rate, has no actual effect on the transmission or infection rate of the virus? And secondly, why is the world going through widespread outbreaks of the Delta variant when so many people, especially in other countries, have been fully vaccinated?

In Israel, of 514 patients hospitalized with COVID as of Aug. 15, 60% were recorded as being fully vaccinated. This is according to an article in Science citing national data tracked by Israel’s largest health management agency. Such figures suggest ‘breakthrough’ infections may be much more common than we are being told. Israel has one of the world’s highest COVID vaccination levels with 78% of the population over age 12 fully vaccinated. It also now has one of the highest infection rates in the world.

Another study, this one published in the Lancet on 10 August by the prestigious Oxford University Clinical Research Group, shows people who are vaccinated against COVID are also more susceptible to the Delta variant. The paper revealed there had been widespread vaccine failure and transmission under tightly controlled ‘hospital lockdown’ conditions in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The study found vaccinated people carried 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils, compared to unvaccinated people. It also found that vaccinated workers were still getting COVID, and were transmitting it to one another, during the lockdown period. The data matches a CDC study, released on 30 July, which shows that vaccinated people may be transmitting the Delta variant just as easily as the unvaccinated.

Does this mean that vaccinated people are playing a key role in the evolution and transmission of COVID variants? No-one knows for sure, because as of 1 May the CDC announced suddenly that it

would no longer track ‘breakthrough’ cases, except those resulting in hospitalisations or deaths. In Australia, no-one seems to be tracking ‘breakthrough’ cases either.

As one epidemiologist said, “basically we are flying blind” when it “comes to understanding the true impact of vaccines on transmissibility, or on the sudden spread of new variants everywhere”.

That such vital data is not being tracked by government, or at least has not been made publicly available, is absolutely disgraceful.

Stephen Andrew MP, State Member for Mirani