Post-vaccination “revolutionary” COVID-19 infections are being taken “seriously,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday, while federal officials expressed concern about the increase in coronavirus cases in the United States.
“With regard to the revolutionary cases of people who were vaccinated and, in the end, contracted the infection, obviously this is something that we take seriously and monitor closely,” said the country’s leading infectious disease specialist during a briefing. on coronavirus at the White House.
Fauci explained that some infections emerging in individuals fully vaccinated with any vaccination effort are not entirely uncommon.
“You will see revolutionary infections in any vaccination when you are literally vaccinating tens and tens and tens of millions of people, so in some ways this is not surprising,” said Fauci.
Fauci said that “one of the important things that will be done and must be done is to sequence the genome of the virus that is the discovery virus” to find out if the infection was from the original virus strain or one of the COVID-19 variants.
“It would be very important to see if they broke with the wild-type virus, which would indicate a real decrease in immunity or if they broke with one of the variants, which would be much more explainable if you didn’t have enough cross-reactivity,” he said.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added: “Therefore, all of this information will be collected and will be very informative for us about the type and frequency of advances that we will see”.
Fauci’s comments were made after Minnesota this week reported 89 revolutionary infections among people who were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
None of them were among the 6,798 COVID-19 deaths in Minnesota, including the nine deaths reported on Wednesday, and doctors noted that even those who were hospitalized after being vaccinated had milder illnesses, reported the Star Tribune.
Idaho health officials also said this week that there were less than 100 reported cases of COVID-19 discovery, according to KTVB.
Meanwhile, the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said during the briefing that the United States averages about 57,000 cases of COVID-19 per day and that the average case in seven days increased by 7 percent.
The most recent seven-day average of hospitalizations in the United States for the coronavirus was about 4,700 – a “slight increase” over the previous seven-day period, said Walensky.
In addition, the COVID-19-related death rate in the country continues to “hover” at around 1,000 a day, said Walensky.
“I am still very concerned about this trajectory,” she said. “We have seen cases and hospital admissions move from historic declines to stagnations and increases.”
“We know from previous outbreaks that if we don’t control things now, there is real potential for the epidemic curve to rise again,” said Walensky, urging Americans to “take this moment very seriously.”
In the past two weeks, the United States has “consistently” inoculated about 2.5 million Americans a day and the country is on track to meet President Biden’s new vaccination target of 200 million injections administered in its first 100 days in the United States. position, White House Coronavirus Response, said coordinator Jeff Zients.
“With 200 million injections in the first 100 days, more than half of all adult Americans will have received at least one injection by April 29,” said Zients.
“Nobody even considered reaching that goal a few months ago,” he said. “But now it is possible due to the aggressive action that we take.”
As of Friday, 71 percent of individuals aged 65 and older have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to Zients.
“This is important because the elderly are unfortunately responsible for 80 percent of COVID deaths,” he said.
Overall, Zients said, more than one in three adults received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Since inoculation efforts began in mid-December, more than 47.4 million Americans, or 14.3% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.
“Of course, there is a case for optimism, but not a case for relaxation,” said Zeints. “This is not the time to let your guard down.”