- Six fully vaccinated people who attended an outdoor wedding in Texas got COVID-19, a new study says.
- All of the breakthrough infections were in guests over the age of 50.
- There were two serious cases (including one death) in attendees who’d gotten India’s Covaxin vaccine.
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Six fully vaccinated people came down with COVID-19 after an outdoor wedding in Texas – a small outbreak that, above all, underscores how effective US-authorized vaccines are against even variants of the virus.
Though the vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna may not knock out every COVID-19 case, especially now that the more infectious Delta variant dominates across the US, they are very good at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19.
The preprint study from Baylor College of Medicine found that only one person who’d recently gotten an Indian-made vaccine, Covaxin, died after attending the 92-person wedding near Houston.
The wedding took place inside a “large, open air tent,” before the Delta variant was circulating widely across the US.
The study authors suspect that the Delta variant was introduced into the wedding by two patients who were traveling from India, and who had tested negative before boarding their flight, but developed symptoms once they landed in the US.
2 men in their 60s had the most severe COVID-19 cases
All six of the wedding guests who contracted symptomatic cases of COVID-19 after the wedding were over the age of 50. Two of them had Pfizer, two had Moderna, and two had an Indian vaccine called Covaxin. Their infections were also confirmed with lab tests and viral sequencing for Delta.
Each patient experienced some common signs of a COVID-19 illness, including fever, cough, fatigue, and body aches. Those who’d gotten Moderna and Covaxin also lost their sense of smell.
One Covaxin recipient and one person who’d gotten Pfizer’s vaccine came down with more severe infections, the study said. The latter was a man in his 60s with no known medical conditions that increase the odds of contracting COVID-19 — he was hospitalized and given Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment (the same one President Donald Trump received) 10 days after the wedding.
The Covaxin recipient, a man in his late 60s (also with no COVID-19 comorbidities), died from complications of COVID-19. The other people who contracted symptomatic COVID-19 after the wedding had preconditions including hypertension and diabetes or were classified as overweight, the study said.
Vaccines help prevent severe sickness
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said vaccinated people should still get a COVID-19 test if they experience symptoms like a runny nose, sore throat, or cough, which can be indicative of a mild Delta infection among fully vaccinated people.
“What I would say is: If you have those upper respiratory symptoms and you’ve been vaccinated, you should absolutely get a COVID-19 test,” Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 briefing last week.
But she also stressed that preliminary data from the past few months suggested that 99.5% of coronavirus deaths in the US were occurring in unvaccinated people.
“Those deaths were preventable with a simple, safe shot,” she said.
During the briefing, Dr. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, also pointed to real-world data from Scotland and England suggesting that the currently authorized US vaccines are highly effective at preventing the most disastrous cases of this variant.
“Please get vaccinated,” Fauci said. “It will protect you against the surging of the Delta variant.”