An Israeli study showed that infection with the emerging corona virus after vaccination can lead to long-term symptoms

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Nearly 3% of medical workers in a new Israeli study contracted COVID-19 despite being vaccinated, and 19% remained symptomatic after six weeks.

Although vaccines were never expected to be perfect, the results raise questions about their protection and suggest that even vaccinated people may experience long-term symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath.

Dr Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said he was concerned – though not categorically – about persistent symptoms after weeks of illness.

“There may actually be a risk here, but we don’t know how big the risk is and how big the problem is,” he said.

Most of the people in the study who contracted the disease had mild symptoms, and none were hospitalized.

But Jha said he is troubled by the fact that healthy young people will develop a so-called superinfection within a few months of being vaccinated. The scientists expected that protection would wane over time, and they predicted that vaccines would be less effective among the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. But this is not who developed the disease in this study.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, said she was not surprised that a number of health care workers became infected after vaccination because they were constantly exposed to patients.

“It makes sense to me that healthcare workers are particularly vulnerable to infection, which makes mitigation (massive) measures even more important in healthcare settings,” she said by email.

The good news is that the 39 people who contracted the virus did not transmit the coronavirus to anyone else, according to the study, which was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Fully vaccinated people can get COVID, but experts say they are not likely to become severely ill.

Eric Topol, a cardiologist who founded and directs the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, said coronavirus vaccines were never designed to completely protect people from all infections.

The story continues

He said current vaccines are great at preventing serious infections deep in the lungs, but not at preventing infections in the upper airways. What is needed, he said, is a nasal spray vaccine that would stop the spread of the coronavirus at all.

Topol said he wishes the federal government had prioritized the nasal vaccine with injections. “It would have been a perfect combination,” he said.

Some researchers believe that vaccines will reduce viral loads, and that people with lower viral loads will be less likely to develop long-term symptoms. Topol said the new study raises questions about that.

“Those who were vaccinated did everything right, but some will continue COVID for a long time, which is really unfortunate,” he said.

The study tracked about 1,500 Israeli healthcare workers for four months after they received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Anyone who tests positive more than 11 days after the second dose is considered a breakthrough.

39 people have been diagnosed with the virus – 2.6% of the total -. One of them was immunocompromised. The rest were healthy, including nurses, maintenance workers, and a few doctors.

All 37 people for whom data were available were infected by an unvaccinated person, usually indoors.

Two-thirds of them experienced mild symptoms. The rest had absolutely nothing.

Six weeks after their diagnosis, 19% reported that they still had at least one symptom: loss of smell, cough, fatigue, weakness, difficulty breathing, or muscle pain. Nine employees – 23% – were not healthy enough to return to work after 10 days of the required quarantine. No one has returned after six weeks.

Most had the alpha variant of the virus, which is more contagious than the original version, but less contagious than the delta variant that now accounts for most cases in the United States.

Whether delta is more dangerous in addition to being more contagious remains unclear, Jha said.

Paula Preciado gets a COVID-19 test in North Miami, Florida, on July 15, 2021.

“The evidence is really mixed about whether delta is more virulent,” he said. “I can point you to some studies that argue it’s not and other studies, but none of them are particularly conclusive.”

Topol said the best protection is vaccination and practicing social measures such as wearing a mask.

“Don’t take the delta voltage test. Keep the mask,” he said. “With a vaccine, you can be confident, but you can’t be 100% confident.”

Contact Karen Weintraub at [email protected].

Health coverage and patient safety on USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competitiveness in Healthcare. The Massimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID-19 infection can lead to long-term symptoms: Study

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