CDC says out of 5,800 fully vaccinated Americans who have gotten COVID-19, 74 died

Out of some 5,800 Americans who have gotten COVID-19 even though they had already been fully vaccinated against the virus that causes the disease, almost 400 needed hospital treatment and 74 are deceased.

The individuals got the virus that causes COVID-19 even though they had already received one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or the two shots required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention informed the Epoch Times through email.

Slightly more than 40% of the infections occurred in individuals 60 or older and 65% were women, according to the outlet, which noted that the statistics represented cases through April 13.

"To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics," the CDC noted. "COVID-19 vaccines are effective and are a critical tool to bring the pandemic under control. All of the available vaccines have been proven effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths. However, like is seen with other vaccines, we expect thousands of vaccine breakthrough cases will occur even though the vaccine is working as expected."

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky informed a congressional hearing on Thursday that the reasons for breakthrough cases are getting investigated: "Some of these breakthroughs are, of course, failure of an immune response in the host, and then some of them we worry might be related to a variant that is circulating, so we're looking at both," she remarked, according to the Epoch Times.

"The number of cases the CDC has identified, through data from states, does not include people who contract COVID-19 less than two weeks after their final dose, according to Walensky."

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 while the Moderna vaccine was said to be 94.1% effective in preventing the disease, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Regarding the Johnson & Johnson vaccine: "Overall, the vaccine was approximately 67% effective in preventing moderate to severe/critical COVID-19 occurring at least 14 days after vaccination and 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe/critical COVID-19 occurring at least 28 days after vaccination," according to the FDA. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted last week, according to the Epoch Times, that "I think the important thing is to look at what the denominator of vaccinated people is, because it is very likely—and what we’re hearing at least indirectly, and we're certainly going to be confirming that—that that number of individuals who were breakthrough infections is not at all incompatible with a 90-plus percent vaccine efficacy."