The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped monitoring how many vaccinated people contract Covid-19 in May.
QUICK FACTS:
- A “breakthrough” case is one in which a person who is vaccinated against the coronavirus nevertheless becomes infected with the coronavirus.
- The CDC stopped publicly reporting “nonsevere” breakthrough cases—cases not resulting in hospitalization or death—as of May 2021, according to The Hill.
- The CDC is only publicly reporting breakthrough hospitalizations and deaths, “not the total number of cases.“
- The agency said the change was intended to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” The Hill reports.
- An opinion piece from The Guardian argues that because “vaccinated people are experiencing breakthroughs,” it is clear that “we cannot afford to navigate yet another phase of the pandemic without data to guide our way.”
CRITICISM AGAINST THE CDC FOR NOT COLLECTING BREAKTHROUGH CASE DATA:
- A recent opinion piece from The Guardian says “The US is stumbling in the dark when it comes to breakthrough cases.”
- The piece claims the because the CDC is not collecting breakthrough case data we don’t know “how many people,” “which populations, are having breakthrough infections,” or “what are the chances they will develop long Covid.”
- “[T]here’s a dearth of rigorous data on breakthrough cases in the United States,” the piece argues.
- The piece goes on to urge “This is the kind of information that the public needs in order to understand the risks of daily life during the pandemic, and that scientists need to assess the shifting epidemiology of the virus.”
- “We should be able to rely on the CDC to collect and share this data.”
- The piece claims the CDC is not as “thorough” in its surveillance of breakthrough cases as it could be.
- “The general public must have this information so they understand how and why to protect themselves, even if they are vaccinated.”
- Moreover, “researchers must have it so that they can understand how the virus is evolving and track any emerging vaccine-resistant variants that may be driving breakthrough cases,” says the piece.
BACKGROUND:
- The CDC website says “no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people” and that there is only “some evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.”
- A study recently released by the CDC examined a coronavirus outbreak in Cape Cod, Massachusetts showing that three-quarters (74%) of the infected had been fully vaccinated.
- Hundreds of health care workers in San Francisco recently caught Covid-19 despite being vaccinated.
- The vaccinated make up “85–90% of the hospitalizations” from Covid-19 in Israel, according to the Director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem Dr. Kobi Haviv.
- Israeli ministry figures confirmed 3,843 coronavirus cases in a single day, even though “over 5.8 million have received at least one vaccine dose.”
- 12 of 13 countries on Johns Hopkins list of most vaccinated also appear as “high” or “very high” on the CDC’s Covid-19 travel risk chart.
Jon Fleetwood is Managing Editor for American Faith.
