4,115 Breakthrough Covid-19 Cases Involved Hospitalizations, Deaths: CDC

As many as 4,115 people have been hospitalized or have died with Covid-19 breakthrough infections despite being vaccinated, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Out of those cases, CDC noted that 26% of hospitalizations were reported as asymptomatic or not related to Covid-19, and 19% of the 750 deaths were reported as asymptomatic or unrelated to Covid-19, reported Fox News.

Almost half of the breakthrough cases, or 49%, involve women, and 3,124, or 76%, occurred in patients aged 65 years and older. Experts have been predicting vaccine breakthrough cases would be reported, as "no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people.

President Joe Biden had aimed to get 70% of US adults at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot by Independence Day, i.e. July 4. But, the White House this week said that the US would fall short of the vaccination goals, saying that more work needs to be done to encourage younger Americans to get vaccinated, reported CNN.

The White House has come up with a Covid-19 student community corps of young leaders and is inviting interested students aged 16 and older to join. While there are many initiatives to encourage people to take the jab, the student corps is an additional step aimed at reaching younger Americans to spread information about the vaccine across the US.

"The goal of the student community corps is to one, recognize the power that young people have to not only get vaccinated, but to help their peers get vaccinated. And it's also to recognize that, inherent in that power, is the fact that young people often want to hear from other young people," US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said on Thursday.

According to him, the student community corps is intended to provide youngsters with the resources and support that they need to go out there and talk to their classmates, to their family members, and to their friends and help them get the information they need to get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, a study suggests that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are likely to produce long-lasting immunity, and may protect people against the coronavirus for years. “It’s a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine,” said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

The study did not include the Covid vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, but Ellebedy said that he expected the immune response to be less durable than that produced by mRNA vaccines.