The physical and emotional devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic made it understandable that people were looking for a lifeline to hold on to. For many, that was the vaccines. Vaccines, touted as the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, have changed the game when it comes to preventing serious illness from COVID-19. But a myth that people who have been fully vaccinated and then tested positive for COVID are not actually contagious and cannot infect others has stubbornly persisted.
Can people who are fully vaccinated test positive for COVID and spread the disease? The answer is yes. According to an article in Nature, “individuals who contract COVID-19 after vaccination and even after a booster dose still shed virus into the air.”
When Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines completed their trials in late 2020, we learned that they had a greater than 90% efficacy rate in preventing COVID-19 disease.
That vaccine efficacy means 95% is explained in a PBS Newshour article, which says: “Imagine you’re conducting a vaccine trial. They randomize 1,000 people to receive the vaccine in a group. They randomize another 1,000 to be given a placebo in the other group. Let’s say 2.5% of people in the vaccinated group get COVID-19 compared to 50% in the unvaccinated group. That means the vaccine is 95% effective. So 95% means the reduction in the proportion of the disease in the vaccinated group. However, a vaccine that is 95% effective does not mean that 5% of those vaccinated will get COVID-19. The news is even better: your risk of disease is reduced by 95%.”
How did we get from these very positive statistics to the current rates of COVID-19? While there are several factors, variants, particularly the Delta variant and the Omicron variant and their subtypes, top the list. When breakthrough COVID cases first emerged, they were described as “rare” occurrences. With the increasing ability of COVID-19 variants to evade vaccines, rare became commonplace.
The real use of the vaccines is to protect people from ending up in the hospital and dying from COVID-19. According to the American Medical Association, “[t]he…vaccines…do exactly what they are designed to do: protect against serious illness and hospitalizations…Yet the fact remains that vaccination is effective in preventing people from becoming seriously ill or dying from the disease.”
Such serious illnesses include Long COVID. like dr Donald J. Alcendor, an assistant professor of cancer biology at Meharry Medical College, said AmNews, “If you are infected with COVID, any infection, whether it is primary infection, reinfection or rebound infection, carries the risk of developing Long COVID. And no one wants that… Because what we’ve seen is that people who even get vaccinated respond differently to the virus, some weak, some resilient. But the idea that you have a weak response to COVID and COVID is becoming more of a serious illness for you… weeks later you could be on a ventilator and at risk of losing your life.”
What can individuals do to protect themselves? According to the Mayo Clinic’s COVID fact sheet, vaccinated people can still test positive for COVID-19 and spread the disease to others. “Some fully vaccinated people will still get COVID-19 if they are exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19. These are called vaccine breakthrough infections. People with breakthrough vaccine infections can transmit COVID-19 to others.”
While the disease is less deadly for vaccinated people, the CDC also recommends that people continue to wear masks indoors, get booster shots, stay home if they’ve been exposed to COVID-19, and continue to get tested for COVID-19.For general information on what to do if you test positive for COVID-19, see this fact sheet from the NYC Health Department: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/covid/covid-19-symptoms-what-to-do-factsheet.pdf. You can also access resources on AmNews’ COVID-19 page: https://amsterdamnews.com/covid/
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