In a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine published Tuesday, a group of researchers from UC San Diego School of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA report COVID-19 infection rates for a cohort of health care workers previously vaccinated for the novel coronavirus.
"Because of the compulsory daily symptom screening of health care personnel, patients and visitors, and the high testing capacity at both UC San Diego Health and UCLA Health, we were able to identify symptomatic and asymptomatic infections among health care workers at our institutions," said co-author Dr. Jocelyn Keehner, an infectious disease fellow at UCSD...
The authors estimate absolute risk of testing positive for the virus following vaccination was 1.19% for health care workers at UCSD Health and 0.97% at UCLA Health — both higher than the risk identified in the Moderna and Pfizer clinical trials, which were not limited to health care workers.
"There are several possible explanations for this elevated risk," said co-author Dr. Lucy E. Horton, associate professor at UCSD School of Medicine and medical director of the UCSD Health Contact Tracing Unit.
"First, the health care workers surveyed have access to regular asymptomatic and symptomatic testing," Horton continued. "Second, there was a regional surge in infections overlapping with vaccination campaigns during this time period. And third, there are differences in the demographics of health care workers compared to participants in the vaccine clinical trials."
Horton said health care workers tend to be younger and are part of a demographic which she says engage in riskier behavior such as "attending social gatherings in restaurants and bars without adequate masking and physical distancing." ...
Full story at https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/mar/23/small-risk-exists-after-covid-19-vaccine/
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