They already suspected it, but then they took the popcorn test: a difference between salty and sweet popcorn? They just couldn’t taste it anymore, said a 38-year-old family man from the Allgäu recently on the show Zervakis & Opdenhövel. live. The corona virus hit the entire family – all four children and their parents. The mother and father were vaccinated against Covid-19. “We were very, very shocked at first,” said the father. “It’s just unbelievable when you see that and think: How can that be?”
More and more people in Germany are doing the same as the family. According to the latest weekly report from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) have registered almost 118,000 vaccination breakthroughs since the start of the vaccination campaign – i.e. infections including corona symptoms despite a full vaccination. Every third person who complained of Covid-19 symptoms in the past four weeks was fully vaccinated.
As irritating as the numbers seem, experts are hardly surprised. “A lot of people are now vaccinated. And even if 118,000 sounds like a lot, only 0.2 percent of those vaccinated have had a breakthrough in vaccination,” says Christine Falk, President of the German Society for Immunology. Unvaccinated people, on the other hand, are eight times as likely to develop Covid-19 as vaccinated people. And they get more sick.
A vaccinated person only carries viruses in their throat for around three days, an unvaccinated person for seven
But even vaccinated people are not always immune to a severe course. Their share of inpatient Covid-19 patients has now risen to 32 percent, and in intensive care units to 25 percent. “That seems high at first,” says Falk. But given that the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, their proportion of patients in clinics and intensive care units is low.
“If the vaccinations against Covid-19 were a while ago, they are no longer so good at preventing an infection,” emphasizes Carsten Watzl, Secretary General of the German Society for Immunology. “But they ensure that you usually don’t get seriously ill – and they still do that very well.” If a vaccinated person does have a severe course after being infected, it can be traced back to various causes.
First: the immune system is not well positioned and has therefore not responded adequately to the vaccination. This is especially the case with older people. In addition, the coronavirus is particularly hard on them; The vast majority of the vaccinated intensive care patients are therefore over 60 years old, many over 80. Second: It is precisely this vulnerable group that was vaccinated at an early age. Since the vaccination protection decreases over time, you now need a booster vaccination. Third: Those who were vaccinated early on received the two syringes as a rule three weeks apart; now we know that a longer distance is better. Fourth: It probably also depends on the number of viruses you get infected with. And finally, the delta variant also affects the effectiveness of the vaccinations.
Despite all this, the protection of the vaccination against symptomatic corona infection is still 75 percent for people under 60 years of age and 73 percent for older people, according to the RKI. The protection against hospitalization as a result of the infection is 90 percent for the younger and 85 percent for the elderly, that before treatment in the intensive care unit is 94 percent for the younger and 91 percent for the elderly and that before death is 98 percent for the younger and 85 percent for the older. From Carsten Watzl’s point of view, the balance is still excellent: “I don’t get vaccinated to prevent a mild cold, I get vaccinated so as not to get seriously ill,” he says.
The fact that vaccinated people can still get infected may also be due to the route of infection. Because the vaccination takes place in the muscle, so the immune system is mainly active in the bloodstream. When the virus enters the body through the nose and mouth, it can multiply there for the time being – until the troops of the immune system, warned by the vaccination, arrive. They usually defeat the pathogen quickly. A vaccinated person thus carries viruses in the throat for a shorter period of time than an unvaccinated person, with Sars-CoV-2 on average only about three instead of seven days.
Vaccinated people should also make sure that they do not become infected
Experts conclude from this that those who have been vaccinated are significantly less contagious to others than those who have not been vaccinated. Studies have found a similarly high viral load in the throat of vaccinated people on some days as for unvaccinated people. Yet the viruses are According to a study from Rotterdam that has not yet been peer-reviewed less active. Because the immune system fights them, some of them become unable to hijack new cells.
Nevertheless, people who have been vaccinated can pass the virus on – especially if the contact is very intense. A recent study from the Trade journal Lancet Infectious Diseases According to vaccinated and unvaccinated people infected every fourth family member. Of the vaccinated family members, only 25 percent became infected, compared with 38 percent of the unvaccinated.
Even at parties and club events, which are considered to be very susceptible to infection, there have recently been numerous infections, even if they were only accessible to vaccinated and convalescent people (2G). In Münster, for example, more than 80 people contracted the corona virus at a party with around 380 guests. However, according to the city’s health department, none of these infected people had a secondary infection. The city of Hamburg reports something similar.
Even vaccinated people should always keep in mind that they can become infected and potentially contagious for others, says the Covid-19 expert Clemens Wendtner from the Munich Clinic Schwabing. “You should be careful not to get infected and test yourself – especially before entering sensitive areas like an old people’s home.” That is currently the most important message from the vaccination breakthroughs. The other is: Even if it is not one hundred percent – vaccination protects.