Vaccinated people can still be infected with corona. This is rare, but it does happen. The vaccination can usually prevent severe courses, but does it also protect against Long Covid?
It’s pure math. The more virus there is in the world, the more likely it is, figuratively speaking, to run into it. And every contact with the virus carries the risk of infection. This also applies to those who have been vaccinated. Because no vaccine protects 100 percent. So-called breakthrough infections are therefore inevitable, but comparatively harmless. Because the antibodies formed by the vaccination fight off the virus, weaken infections and usually prevent severe courses.
So far so good. But in addition to the risk of acute serious illness from Covid-19, the infection harbors another one: Long Covid. Between 10 and 30 percent of adults who become infected with the virus develop long-term effects such as constant exhaustion, shortness of breath, and brain fog, according to estimates from studies. Are vaccinated people safe from it?
Many questions still open
According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), at least 10,827 cases of vaccination breakthroughs (as of August 12) have been documented in Germany since the start of the vaccination campaign. According to the RKI, two percent of those affected who are younger than 60 and every fourth person over the age of 60 subsequently had to be treated in hospital. Whether and, if so, how many subsequently developed Long Covid cannot be read from the report. The data situation is thin, not just in Germany. The majority of the data that has been collected on Long Covid so far relates to cases of unvaccinated people. There is evidence from research that suggests that people who become infected despite being completely vaccinated can develop symptoms that last for weeks or even months, but how often this occurs and how severe the symptoms are is unclear.
The long-term consequences, also known as the “long shadow of Corona”, are diverse, persistent and difficult to treat. According to the RKI, people who became seriously ill with Covid-19 seem to be significantly more likely to be affected by long-term consequences. But it can also catch people with very mild and mild disease processes. A study by a Cologne research team found that around one in ten people who had no or only minor corona symptoms still carried symptoms with them months after the acute illness. Young people without previous illnesses were also affected.
Long Covid despite vaccination
A small study that was carried out in Israel provides a first clue about Long Covid after breakthroughs in vaccination. Almost 1,500 Israeli health workers took part in the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. All were fully vaccinated at this point. Breakthroughs occurred in 39, around 2.6 percent. A third of those affected had no symptoms, the rest had mild symptoms, and none had to be treated in the clinic. But 19 percent of those affected reported complaints such as persistent coughing, loss of smell, fatigue and pain even after six weeks. If symptoms persist for more than four weeks after infection, one speaks of long covid.
However, the figures from Israel must not be overinterpreted. On the one hand, she had a completely different research objective, the antibody level in infected people, and on the other hand, it is a very small number of cases. The data on the Long Covid cases were therefore more of a by-product. Especially since the study was carried out when the delta variant was not yet prevalent. The numbers do not yet provide an answer to how great the risk is for those who have been vaccinated to contract Long Covid. More studies are now needed to examine this observation in more detail, said virologist Sandra Ciesek in the NDR podcast “Coronavirus Update”.
The more people become infected in the population, the higher the likelihood that vaccinated people will meet infected people and vaccination breakthroughs will increase, according to Ciesek. “That will probably happen several times over the next few years,” she said. The goal is that in such a case the immune system kicks in and contact with the virus only leads to a slight and brief infection. The calculation is simple: the more people have recovered or have been vaccinated, the less vulnerable the virus is. The fewer are infected, the lower the risk of developing long-term effects. Or, as health expert Karl Lauterbach commented on Twitter: “Even vaccinated people have to be careful. Vaccination refuses put us all at risk because they keep incidence high.”
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