COVID-19 infections “discovered” post-vaccination are being taken “seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday, while federal officials expressed concern about the increase in coronavirus cases in the United States.
“As for the innovative cases of people who have been vaccinated and who have finally become infected, obviously this is something we take seriously and follow closely,” said the lead disease expert. infectious diseases of the nation in the virtual briefing of the White House coronavirus.
Fauci explained that some infections found in fully vaccinated individuals with any vaccination effort are not entirely unusual.
“You’ll see revolutionary infections in any vaccination when you vaccinate literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people, so in some ways, it’s not surprising,” Fauci said.
Fauci said that “one of the important things that will be done and needs to be done is to sequence the genome of the virus which is the virus discovered” to find out if the infection comes from the original strain of the virus or one of the COVID-19 variants.
“It would be very important to see if they broke out with the wild-type virus, which would indicate a real decrease in immunity or if it broke with one of the variants, which would be much more explicable if you do not have enough cross-reactivity,” he said. he said.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added: “So, all this information will be collected and we will be very informative about the type and frequency of discoveries we will see.”
Fauci’s comments come after Minnesota reported 89 infections this week among people who were completely vaccinated against coronavirus.
None of them were among Minnesota’s 6,798 deaths from COVID-19, including the nine deaths reported Wednesday, and doctors noted that even those who were hospitalized after being vaccinated had milder illnesses, he reported. Star Tribune.
Idaho health officials also said this week that there were fewer than 100 reported cases of COVID-19 discovery, according to KTVB.
Meanwhile, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said during the meeting that the US averages about 57,000 COVID-19 cases a day and that the seven-day average of cases has increased by 7%.
The most recent seven-day average of coronavirus hospitalizations in the United States was about 4,700 – a “slight increase” from the previous seven-day period, Walensky said.
In addition, the COVID-19-related death rate in the country continues to “hover” at about 1,000 a day, Walensky said.
“I am deeply concerned about this trajectory,” she said. “We have seen cases and hospitalizations moving from historical declines to stagnation to increases.”
“We know from previous increases that if we don’t control things now, there is real potential for the epidemic curve to grow again,” Walensky said, urging Americans to “take this moment very seriously.”
In the past two weeks, the United States has “constantly” 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 shots. In his first 100 days in office, Coordinator Jeff Zients said.
“With 200 million photos in the first hundred days, more than half of all adult Americans will get at least one shot by April 29,” Zients said.
“No one thought of achieving that goal a few months ago,” he said. “But now it is possible because of the aggressive actions we have taken.”
As of Friday, 71% of people aged 65 and over had received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, according to Zients.
“This is important because the elderly unfortunately account for 80% of COVID deaths,” he said.
Overall, Zients said, more than one in three adults received at least one dose of vaccine.
Since inoculation efforts began in mid-December, more than 47.4 million Americans, or 14.3 percent of the population, have been completely vaccinated.
“Clearly there is reason for optimism, but there is no case for relaxation,” Zeints said. “This is not the time to let our guard down.”