Breakthrough COVID Illness Of Vaccinated People Make Up Less Than 1% All Cases
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - While the vast majority of cases who are COVID-19 positive are unvaccinated, there are some so-called "breakthrough cases."
Those are people who develop a COVID infection even after receiving a vaccine.
CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez explains that's extremely rare, but it can happen.
"My lungs are clogged up with mucus and blood."
Those were likely some of Angelle Mosley's last words as her mother read them from a text to CBS This Morning's David Begnaud.
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"I prayed with her, and I assured her that we love her," said her mother Tara Mosley.
Angelle died that day. She was 33.
But earlier, when Angelle tested positive for COVID, she had told her mother and sister that she was vaccinated.
Breakthrough cases like Angelle make up less than 1% of all COVID cases. Of the more than 168 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated, around 8,000 have been hospitalized or died of COVID. That's about .005%.
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So what would Angelle's mother respond to people who say she got vaccinated and still died?
"I will still say to them, still be vaccinated, because her weight played a lot in it," Tara Mosley said.
Angelle's doctor had warned her that her weight was a serious risk factor.
"He says is that she's a large person. Her heart could not pump like it should have been pumping," Mosley said.
The CDC says that people with certain comorbidities are more at risk for having severe symptoms or dying of COVID-19. Among them: Obesity, chronic kidney and heart disease, asthma, cancer and diabetes.
In many hospitals, the average age for these breakthrough infections is 74 years old.
Bottom line: Vaccines will likely save your life or keep you from getting seriously ill, so they are still highly recommended. Especially if you have a severe underlying condition.