Corona current
This vaccine has the most breakthroughs
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Even those who are fully vaccinated can become infected with corona. But how many vaccine breakthroughs have there actually been – and with which vaccine most often?
A little more than 55 million people in Germany are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be careless and disregard the hygiene regulations, because there is no such thing as 100 percent vaccination protection. This means that so-called vaccination breakthroughs can occur, in which even fully vaccinated people become infected.
Why do vaccination breakthroughs occur?
The vaccines against the coronavirus that have been approved so far are very effective – but not 100 percent. Virologists therefore expected from the start that infections could occur despite a complete vaccination. This was also confirmed by the director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital Frankfurt, Sandra Ciesek, in the “Coronavirus Update” podcast. According to this, there is almost never in the history of medicine a 100 percent protection against illness through a vaccination.
According to Ciesek, it must be expected that the number of vaccination breakthroughs will continue to rise. The reason for this is the very contagious Delta variant, the generally increasing number of infections and the fact that the immune defense against the virus in older people decreases again in the months after the vaccination.
How many breakthroughs have there been so far?
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) defines a vaccination breakthrough “as a SARS-CoV-2 infection with clinical symptoms that was diagnosed in a fully vaccinated person using PCR or pathogen isolation.” According to the last weekly report dated November 8, there were a total of 145,185 vaccination breakthroughs according to the RKI. Primarily affected were people between 18 and 59 with a total of 107,890 cases, among those over 60 it was 33,310 cases. At first, that sounds like a very high number – but you have to put it in relation to the vaccination rate, which is now also quite high. In fact, significantly more people who have not been vaccinated become infected than those who have been vaccinated.
Which vaccine has frequent breakthroughs?
Most vaccine breakthroughs are with the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine – In total, the RKI has reported 96,970 infections since the beginning of February, despite a complete vaccination. With the other vaccines, the vaccination breakthroughs are distributed as follows:
- Johnson & Johnson: 18,585 cases
- AstraZeneca: 11,494 cases
- Moderna: 7,096 cases
Vaccination breakthroughs have also occurred with cross-vaccinations: If AstraZeneca and BioNTech were vaccinated, a total of 6,995 vaccination breakthroughs occurred, if the second vaccination was carried out with the remedy from Moderna, the number was 1,241.
How meaningful are these numbers?
However, one cannot infer from these vaccination breakthroughs that the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine is generally unsafe. Because here too you have to put the number of vaccination breakthroughs in relation to the total number of people vaccinated. The main reason for the many vaccine breakthroughs with the vaccine from BioNTech / Pfizer is that by far the largest number of people were vaccinated with it – this automatically increases the likelihood of a vaccination breakthrough. If one compares the vaccine breakthroughs of the BioNTech / Pfizer compound with those of the other vaccines, according to the RKI, the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has the most vaccine breakthroughs.
Nevertheless, the vaccination still offers the best protection against a severe Covid 19 infection: This allows the immune system to react and form antibodies that keep the viruses in check in the event of a possible infection. If the illness occurs despite the vaccination, it is mild in the vast majority of cases – in more than 86 percent of all cases, hospitalization is unnecessary. In the reporting weeks 5 to 43, according to the RKI, only 3.5 percent of 18 to 59 year olds had to undergo intensive care because of a breakthrough vaccination, 10.3 percent of those over 60. In the case of those under 18 years of age, no case has had to be treated in intensive care so far.
Sources: RKI, zdf.de, morgenpost.de