Since the SARS-CoV-2 variant Delta has spread almost worldwide successfully and was also found in vaccinated people, the fearful terms have been making the rounds ever faster. There is talk of vaccination breakthroughs and vaccination failures. Above all, some figures from an online report published days ago by the American Disease Center CDC produced a fatal effect: Should fully vaccinated persons be infected with the highly contagious Delta virus as easily as unvaccinated persons - and even more seriously: Should they possibly get the virus just as easily can be transferred to vulnerable groups? If it were, confidence in the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines could be massively undermined. In fact, the first, frequently cited conclusions from the CDC study had obviously been overinterpreted,the corresponding counter-reactions from experts were inevitable, and the results of other current studies also show that stylizing the delta variant as a vaccine killer just because it multiplies faster in the mucous membranes than all previously known variants is completely exaggerated.
Joachim Müller-Jung
Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.
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"It is clear that we have to finally say goodbye to the idea that completely vaccinated people cannot be positive or that they cannot transmit the virus," admitted the Berlin Charité immunologist Leif Erik Sander in a press conference yesterday.
“But firstly, infections occur much less often in the vaccinated, and they also fall ill significantly less often, and certainly not seriously.” The approved vaccines still had an excellent effect, even with the increased delta risk, and they continue to be a “relevant brake “For the spread of the pathogen.
Authority admits that the data are insufficient
The study analyzed in the CDC report presented the consequences of a series of events - both indoors and outdoors - that took place in the first two weeks of July in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Thousands of people, mostly middle-aged men, had gathered and celebrated in bars, halls and on the festival grounds. The incidence in the county was zero before, and a few weeks later it was 177. Of the 469 people who tested positive with PCR tests after the spectacle, three quarters were fully vaccinated - either double vaccinated with mRNA vaccine or single vaccinated with the Johnson & amp; -Johnson Vaccine. Even more serious: 274, i.e. almost 80 percent of those vaccinated, developed symptoms, five had to go to the clinic. So obviously there have been vaccination breakthroughs,as the genetic analyzes of many infected people showed, with the delta variant. In the meantime, as local newspapers from Boston report, the number of those infected using contact tracing has risen to more than nine hundred and the number of hospital admissions to seven. So far there have been no deaths.
So the vaccinations had fulfilled their most important purpose: They effectively protect the vaccinated against serious illnesses. The CDC report provides just as little specific information about the symptoms of the more easily ill and their immune status as about the vaccines administered in each case. The agency's paper also acknowledges that "these data are insufficient to say anything about the effectiveness of the vaccines against the viruses, including in relation to Delta." Nevertheless, far-reaching conclusions have been drawn regarding the infectivity of vaccinated subjects. Just from the observation that the so-called Ct value and thus the presumed virus concentration in the nasopharynx, which was determined in the PCR tests, was not very different in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated infected people, it was concluded:Vaccinated people carry the virus on in the same way as unvaccinated people. In the online publication it was already admitted that the method used and the number of cases recorded are insufficient to provide more precise information about the contagiousness of infected people who have been vaccinated.