Four people in Oregon tested positive for COVID-19, although they had been fully vaccinated and it had been long enough for their second doses to become fully effective, state public health officials announced on Friday.
The news makes Oregon one of the first states in the country to identify so-called “innovative cases”, in which people who were considered immune now have contracted the disease. State epidemiologist Dr. Dean Sidelinger noted that the innovative cases were not “unexpected”, since both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are considered to be almost 94% or 95% effective.
“I predict that more states will report more numbers of innovative cases, as there are more people who are fully vaccinated,” said Sidelinger.
He added that “no vaccine is 100% effective in preventing disease”.
But even so, Friday’s revelation raises important questions about vaccine effectiveness: were these four Oregon residents simply an expected mathematical result, that some fully vaccinated people would still be infected with the virus? Or do these cases show a weakness in vaccines if any of these four Oregon residents are infected with variants from the UK, South Africa or Brazil?
To answer these questions, state health officials are testing samples from four fully vaccinated people with a positive result.
Sidelinger said two people were from Yamhill County and two were from Lane County. He said they had no symptoms or had mild symptoms – evidence, said Sidelinger, that the vaccines are working to prevent serious illnesses. He added that two of the cases were related – meaning that they were infected by the group of infection cases in one location.
Sidelinger was unable to share other details about the four, including their ages or whether they work in the healthcare field. But the latter would offer a likely explanation of why, especially if asymptomatic, why one or more of those four would have been tested after receiving two doses of the vaccines.
Medical experts still advise fully vaccinated people to take precautions to protect themselves and others from coronavirus, because about 5% to 6% of fully vaccinated people are still susceptible to infection and it is not known whether fully vaccinated people they can be silent propagators. These precautions include wearing masks, washing your hands frequently, and physically distancing yourself from others who have not yet received vaccines. Sidelinger said Oregon’s four new cases reinforce the importance of this advice.
This is a developing story. Check back later on OregonLive.com for more details.
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– Aimee Green; [email protected]; @o_aimee