More than a quarter of fully vaccinated residents at a Kentucky nursing home have contracted another rare variant of COVID-19, one of two new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) centers.
Studies show how the coronavirus was torn through skilled healthcare facilities in Chicago and Kentucky.
In Chicago, only about four percent of infections were among people who had the blows.
But a rare variant in a single Kentucky unit has made vaccines only about 66% effective for residents and 76% effective for staff – much less than 94% of the 95% efficacy found in clinical trials for photographs. performed by Moderna and Pfizer, respectively.
The pair of studies show that vaccines work well – but do not guarantee protection, especially if there are dangerous variants.
None of the three vaccines authorized in the US have been 100% effective in clinical trials, which means that so-called “discovered” infections are to be expected.
At a Kentucky nursing home, 18 vaccinated residents (black stripes) were infected with a rarer, more infectious Covid variant, as were four vaccinated nursing home staff (light blue).
Only four percent of fully vaccinated (black) staff and residents in 78 Chicago nursing homes became infected
In Chicago, there were outbreaks of COVID-19 in 75 of 78 nursing homes between December 2020 and March 2021.
During this period, there were 627 cases of COVID-19 in the facilities.
Of these, 22 were considered discovered infections, which occurred in 15 of the homes. Twelve of them were residents – most of them 60 or older – and 10 were staff members.
This represents only about four percent of all nursing home cases in the Chicago period, suggesting that the shots were about 96 percent effective overall.
However, vaccination rates have varied widely from asylum to asylum.
Some had vaccination rates of up to 18%, while 96% of residents and staff were vaccinated against others.
The Kentucky nursing home has been hit by R1, a rare Covid variant that is not considered of interest or concern by the CDC. It accounts for only 1.1% of US infections
Most people who caught coronavirus after vaccination never developed symptoms (64%).
Five of them developed symptoms, but only mild. Two of the nursing home residents were hospitalized for COVID-19 after serious infections and one of them eventually died.
In general, in Chicago, vaccines worked roughly as expected, and no one who developed a breakthrough infection transmitted the virus in a secondary transmission.
Even in the face of a worrying variant, vaccines were still extremely effective, preventing about 87% of infections in a nursing home in Kentucky.
But the higher rate of discovery cases highlighted how current and future variants could get rid of vaccines.
More than 90 percent of residents and just over half of nursing home staff had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in March.
In total, 26 residents and 20 staff members of the unit – which housed 83 residents cared for by 116 employees – developed COVID-19.
Twenty-two of these were infections detected among people who had both doses of vaccines.
Sequencing the genome of a virus sample showed that a variant known as R1 was leading the outbreak.
R1 was not considered a variant of concern or interest by the CDC, which means that it is not considered a major threat.
But it has three mutations in its spike protein – the part of the virus that allows it to break into human cells – that can make it more infectious and less affected by coronavirus antibodies triggered by previous infection or vaccines.
According to CDC follow-up, about 1.1 percent of all US infections are caused by R1, which is slightly more than is caused by the South African variant, B3151, and slightly less than is caused by the Brazilian variant P1.
Variant R1 hit the vaccinated elderly in the unit at an alarming rate.
More than a quarter of fully vaccinated residents were infected, as were more than seven percent of staff members.
And it is possible that four people were re-infected and developed symptoms with their second virus attack, according to the CDC study.
The risk of developing the infection was still about three times lower for people who were vaccinated compared to those who were not vaccinated.
Vaccines also prevented 87 percent of staff from developing Covid symptoms or being hospitalized for infection and prevented 94 percent of hospitalizations among residents.
By comparison, four out of six home residents who had not been vaccinated and who had contracted coronavirus had to be hospitalized.
However, one vaccinated resident died of COVID-19, as did two who were not vaccinated.
Overall, the vaccines were approximately 66% effective in protecting residents, who were older people with usually weaker immune responses, and 76% of the infection staff.
CDC authors note that the low vaccination rate among staff members probably allowed the dangerous variant – which had not yet been identified in Kentucky – to penetrate and spread throughout the unit.