Estimating the number of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections among vaccinated individuals in the United States—January–July, 2021
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Abstract
As of March 2021, three COVID-19 vaccines had been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States. Each has substantial efficacy in preventing COVID-19. However, as efficacy from trials was <100% for all three vaccines, disease in vaccinated people is expected to occur. We created a spreadsheet-based tool to estimate the number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people (vaccine breakthrough infections) based on published vaccine efficacy (VE) data, percent of the population that has been fully vaccinated, and average number of COVID-19 cases reported per day. We estimate that approximately 199,000 symptomatic vaccine breakthrough infections (95% CI: ~183,000–214,000 cases) occurred in the United States during January–July 2021 among >156 million fully vaccinated people. With high SARS-CoV-2 transmission and increasing numbers of people vaccinated in the United States, vaccine breakthrough infections will continue to accumulate. Understanding expectations regarding number of vaccine breakthrough infections enables accurate public health messaging to help ensure that the occurrence of such cases does not negatively affect vaccine perceptions, confidence, and uptake.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.03.21261442: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The analytic approach described here is based on several assumptions and limitations that affect how our results should be interpreted. First, this approach is based on reported case counts and does not account for the population at-risk, susceptibility of persons previously infected, or duration of immunity following vaccination. …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.03.21261442: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:The analytic approach described here is based on several assumptions and limitations that affect how our results should be interpreted. First, this approach is based on reported case counts and does not account for the population at-risk, susceptibility of persons previously infected, or duration of immunity following vaccination. Second, these calculations assume that vaccinated and unvaccinated people have the same risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, which may not be true at the population level. Third, we define vaccine breakthrough infections as those occurring more than two weeks after completion of vaccination; these figures do not include people who may become infected following partial vaccination or prior to 14 days following completion of vaccination. Fourth, reported COVID-19 case counts stratified by patient age are not available from all states (12). Our assumption that adults comprise 88.3% of reported cases reflects cumulative trends since the beginning of the pandemic; these data may not reflect the age distribution during the weeks included here and only approximate the number of COVID-19 cases occurring among adults. If the proportion of total cases occurring among adults decreased over time, our assumption would yield an overestimate of vaccine breakthrough cases. As younger age groups commence vaccination, calculations should be updated to reflect the entire population. Lastly, reporting delays among both COVID-19 case and vaccine administration data vary, and...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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