Covid-19 Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated Health Care Workers

🤖 Plain-English Summary

BACKGROUND: Despite the high efficacy of the BNT162b2 messenger RNA vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), rare breakthrough infections have been reported, including infections among health care workers. CONCLUSIONS: Among fully vaccinated health care workers, the occurrence of breakthrough infections with SARS-CoV-2 was correlated with neutralizing antibody titers during the peri-infection period.

🔑 Key Findings

• Data are needed to characterize these infections and define correlates of breakthrough and infectivity.
• METHODS: At the largest medical center in Israel, we identified breakthrough infections by performing extensive evaluations of health care workers who were symptomatic (including mild symptoms) or had known infection exposure.
• These evaluations included epidemiologic investigations, repeat reverse-transcriptase-polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) assays, antigen-detecting rapid diagnostic testing (Ag-RDT), serologic assays, and genomic sequencing.

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