Massachusetts records nearly 4,000 positive COVID-19 tests among fully vaccinated

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Massachusetts records nearly 4,000 positive COVID-19 tests among fully vaccinated

The number could be higher, but the CDC's new reporting guidelines only include individuals who are hospitalized or died.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, June 21, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) listed 150 new COVID-19 positive test results in one week among individuals who are “fully vaccinated,” NBC10 Boston reported, bringing the June 12 breakthrough case total to almost 4,000 in the state.

Breakthrough COVID cases have been defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the detection of COVID-19 RNA in an individual at least 14 days after they have “completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.”

The 3,791 Bay Staters confirmed as breakthrough cases represent just over 0.1 percent of the 3,720,037 people in Massachusetts considered to be fully vaccinated. However, the CDC’s new guidelines on post-vaccination viral breakthrough may have suppressed reports, since only hospitalizations and deaths are now to be recorded when dealing with vaccinated individuals, leaving the majority of symptomatic breakthrough cases of the virus unreported.

LifeSiteNews contacted the Massachusetts DPH for clarification on the number of hospitalizations and deaths recorded among the reported breakthrough cases, as well as the proportion of breakthrough cases of COVID-19 compared with positive tests among the unvaccinated, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

Overall in the United States, the CDC reported May 28 that, until April 30, 10,262 individuals had contracted COVID-19 in 46 states at least two weeks after receiving their second dose of an mRNA vaccine, around 10 percent of whom fell ill and were hospitalized. Before June 1, 535 of those died with the infection, up 375 from April 30, according to CDC data. The agency said  “breakthrough cases are expected,” but will only occur in “a small fraction of all vaccinated persons and account for a small percentage of all COVID-19 cases.”

Though the CDC expects breakthrough cases to be low, the regulator stopped recording COVID infection in vaccinated people not long after numbers began rising more quickly. Shifting the goalposts, the CDC announced that it would no longer count positive infections among fully vaccinated individuals in its records, only counting COVID cases in the vaccinated if it leads to hospitalization or death from May 1.

Given that around 10 percent of vaccinated individuals were hospitalized with COVID-19, that leaves the remaining 90 percent of breakthrough cases to go unreported. 

In the U.K., former chief scientific adviser to the government, Sir David King, himself pro-lockdown and pro-COVID-vaccine, said that “400 new (COVID) cases a day are people who had the vaccine twice,” meaning that “one in 25 new cases (of COVID-19) are people who have been vaccinated.”

New statistics emanating from Britain also suggest that the new variant of the virus currently at large, the Indian variant (also referred to as the Delta variant, originating in India), is responsible for a six-fold increase in deaths among those who have been double jabbed against COVID than those who have not.

Although low in both classes of individuals, 0.00636 percent of fully vaccinated Brits known to have contracted the virus died, which was six times higher than the 0.000957 percent of unvaccinated people who died after testing positive for the virus. Overall, Public Health England reported 73 deaths from the Indian variant in a June 18 briefing, describing the strain as the “dominant variant,” accounting for some “91 percent of sequenced cases” among Britons.

Additionally, hospitalizations for those carrying the Indian variant is higher among the vaccinated, with 2 percent of 4,087 COVID positive and fully vaccinated individuals being admitted to a hospital. This compares with 1.48 percent of 35,521 COVID positive individuals who were unvaccinated being admitted to hospital.

Despite a reported increase in infections, owing to the Indian variant, Britain has seen a 3.1 percent decrease in its five-year average death toll for the week ending May 28, according to figures by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In fact, within the last three months, England and Wales have collectively reported 11 weeks under the five-year average death toll, even as the population ages, which usually gives rise to a slight increase in overall deaths.

As the proportion of infected individuals who become hospitalized and die with the virus plummets, the perceived need for a vaccine diminishes in concert. A research team from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio conducted a study into the necessity of vaccines, focusing on the benefit of the jab in previously infected people, finding that  “(i)ndividuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”

The study revealed that all 2,154 infections recorded in the 52,238 participants were in those who had not previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2. The vast majority of these infections (2,139) were associated with unvaccinated individuals, whereas 15 infections were considered breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals. Compounding these findings is another study into the long-term effects of contracting and recovering from COVID-19, which discovered “antibody-producing cells in people 11 months after first symptoms.”

“These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity,” the authors concluded.