CORONAVIRUS IN FLORIDA 1/17/22
Cases among vaccinated people on the rise
Officials: Breakthroughs make up about 41% of state’s new infections
By Cindy Krischer Goodman South Florida Sun Sentinel
Breakthrough infections now account for an estimated 41% of the reported COVID cases across Florida — marking just how aggressive omicron has been in the state.
The state’s new approximation of breakthroughs as of Jan. 3 is an increase from just a month earlier when health officials estimated about 30% of new infections were in people who were fully vaccinated or boosted. That could amount to as many as 800,000 breakthrough infections in Florida in December, and as new cases are rising in January, that number likely has grown larger.
A breakthrough infection
happens when a person who has been fully vaccinated against COVID still becomes infected two weeks after a second dose. Across the country, scientists say they are seeing more breakthrough infections with omicron than delta because the efficacy of the vaccines is lower against the variant and because omicron is much more contagious.
However, medical experts are reminding the public that vaccinations still slim your chance of the virus killing you.
Miami-Dade County, one of the few counties in the U.S. tracking vaccination status in hospitalized COVID patients, shows the true benefit of the shot against the omicron variant — protection from severe illness.
More than 80% of COVID patients in Miami-Dade’s hospitals are not vaccinated.
So even though the COVID vaccines won’t always keep you from catching the virus, they’ll make it much more likely you end up with mild symptoms rather than a hospital stay. Over the last two weeks, only about 20% of COVID patients in Miami-Dade’s hospitals were vaccinated, and a mere 3% were boosted.
Inside hospitals
“It does look like for the vaccinated this has become a mild illness,” said Dr. Lilly Lee, chief of emergency medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. “If you are unvaccinated or immune impaired, you are at risk and there is still a likelihood you may end up in the ICU.”
Lee said while she is able to send more people home without being admitted for COVID, “you can still get very sick with this variant, especially if you are unvaccinated or have no immune response. You can still end up on a ventilator.”
In Miami-Dade hospitals, about 300 COVID patients are in intensive-care beds and about 200 are on ventilators. Lee said most of the vaccinated patients at her hospital with COVID are immunocompromised or transplant recipients.
“What Miami-Dade’s numbers show is the vaccine still protects you pretty well and a booster protects you very well against hospitalization and death,” said Bill Ku, who has been graphing breakthrough infections on his website, COVID-19 odds.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not updated publicly available breakthrough data since Nov. 20, before the omicron wave began. However, the agency has reported that the risk of COVID infection is eight times higher in the unvaccinated than in the vaccinated; the risk of hospitalization or death in the unvaccinated population is 25 times higher.
Still, one thing that has become clear to doctors is that two doses of Pfizer or Moderna aren’t enough protection against omicron. “There is good evidence that the third dose is providing a lot more protection against omicron,” Dr. Shaun Truelove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNBC.
Florida does not delineate breakthrough infection by vaccinated and boosted but rather groups them together in its estimate of 41% of all infections in the last 30 days. All evidence of booster protection thus far is anecdotal — Floridians reporting more mild cases after their third dose.
Sign of a breakthrough
The predominant symptoms in Floridians with mild breakthrough infections are sore throat, headache, body aches and congestion, local doctors say.
Dr. Jeffrey Collins, chief medical officer of MD Now Urgent Care, said he has seen a difference in symptoms with the unvaccinated. “They just look a little bit sicker than people who are vaccinated. Their symptoms are more pronounced.”
Some studies suggest that vaccinated people may clear the virus faster.
They may carry a lot of virus initially, but it disappears quickly. Collins says he has seen this in particular with people in their 20s and 30s. For them, symptoms usually last about 48 hours. For those 40 and older, the symptoms often last longer — up to two weeks. And in the unvaccinated, symptoms including a cough can linger for three to four weeks.
Collins said more recently he is seeing gastrointestinal issues with COVID — vomiting, diarrhea. “They think they ate something bad and then they test positive.”
While doctors find the highly contagious nature of omicron is fueling breakthrough infections, they say behavior is too.
“Almost everyone I talk to thought the booster was going to prevent infection, and they went to a wedding or a New Year’s Eve party or some event,” Collins said. “They let their guard down and omicron is so contagious and transmissible that they got it. If they were more careful, maybe they wouldn’t have.”
Lori Balter, of Davie, said 10 days after she received her COVID booster, she gathered with her family. One by one they each came down with symptoms and tested positive. She had a few hours of fever, a few days of sinus congestion and about 10 days on and off of a headache. “I feel grateful I had the booster because I know people who weren’t vaccinated that got it more severe and far longer than I did,” Balter said.
“I got vaccinated and boosted to keep me from getting severely ill and I believe it did do that,” she said.
Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @cindykgoodman.
