The Minnesota Department of Health said this week that 89 people tested positive for COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated – but officials are not too concerned about that number.
What’s going on in Minnesota with COVID-19?
The department revealed this week that 89 people tested positive for COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated against the virus.
- According to KARE11, “a small number” of these cases required hospitalization.
Officials said the number might sound alarming. But, officials said, more than 800,000 people in Minnesota received full vaccination against COVID-19. Therefore, this number of positive tests is quite small.
- “This is well below a tenth of 1%, an incredibly small number of cases,” Kris Ehresmann, the department’s director of infectious diseases, told KARE11.
Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn, internal medicine physician at Hennepin Healthcare, said that no vaccine can provide 100% immunity. Effectiveness, she said, is based on each individual’s immune system.
- “Some people may not have a sufficient response to the vaccine so that they have the full level of protection to fight the virus without any symptoms,” said Lichtsinn.
- She added: “We still don’t know enough about whether there are specific risk factors that make one person more likely than another to have a good response to this vaccine.”
Can you get COVID-19 if you are vaccinated?
More research continues to appear on how the new coronavirus can still infect people who have been vaccinated.
Experts told The New York Times that all of this data should encourage people to wear masks and maintain social distance, since COVID-19 can still get it – even with a vaccine.
- “We feel very strongly that this data should not cause people to say, ‘We are all going to be vaccinated and then we can all stop wearing masks,’” said Dr. Francesca Torriani, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego Health, to The New York Times. “These measures should continue until a larger segment of the population is vaccinated.”