Despite the majority of attendees being immunized, a COVID-19 epidemic occurred during a conference hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In April, over 1,800 CDC employees and others met in Atlanta, where the CDC is based, at a hotel for a meeting on epidemiological research and tactics.
Several attendees informed conference organizers that they had come up positive for COVID-19 on April 27, the conference’s final day. In an effort to determine the proportion of guests who had tested positive, the CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health conducted a survey of registrants.
The CDC stated in an announcement on May 26 that the objectives of the study were to “learn more about the transmission that occurred and add to our understanding as we transition to the next phase of COVID-19 surveillance and response.”
About 80% of participants responded to the survey. 181 of them claimed to have tested positive for COVID-19.
99.4% of the respondents reported receiving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccination.
If any unvaccinated individuals become ill, the number of cases was not made public. Additionally, officials did not distinguish between those who had been immunized with the latest bivalent vaccinations and those who had not. Requests for more information have not received a response from the CDC.
The survey was completed by about 360 persons, so the outbreak may have been more widespread than that.
The symposium was a “superspreader event,” according to Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who posted the information on Twitter.
The outbreak demonstrates that COVID-19 is “still capable of causing big outbreaks and infecting many,” according to Dr. Tom Inglesby, head of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A representative for the Georgia Department of Public Health informed The Epoch Times via email that many conference attendees were non-Georgians and that many of them used testing at home.
The CDC stated that the survey results “underline the importance of vaccination for protecting individuals against severe illness and death related to COVID-19” since none of the respondents who indicated they were positive reported visiting a hospital.
The bivalent shots have not yet undergone any clinical trials, despite the fact that they were initially approved nine months ago. Observational data indicate that they offer minimal defense against infection, despite the fact that authorities claim they offer defense against serious sickness. Studies, even those in CDC papers that have not undergone peer review, show that this protection is transient.
The Pfizer and Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccinations, which replaced the previous vaccines earlier this year, had inadequate efficiency against hospitalization, according to the most current publication, which was published on May 26.
Between seven and 59 days, the protection was 62% among persons without “documented immunocompromising conditions,” but between 59 and 120 days, it dropped to 47% before rising to just 24%.
The effectiveness peaked at just 41% among people with “documented immunocompromising conditions,” dropping to 13% after 120 days.
The effectiveness estimates for the combined group of people with and without “documented immunocompromising conditions” were not provided by the study’s authors. Additionally, they did not offer estimates of vaccination effectiveness (VE) without controlling for a number of factors.
According to David Wiseman, founder and president of Synechion, “Both the crude VE and adjusted VE should be reported so that big discrepancies are evident to the reader and questioned.”
When considering those who were considered immunocompetent, the effectiveness against severe illness—defined as admission to intensive care or death—peaked at 85% but fell to 33% after 120 days. The effectiveness was not predicted to exceed 53% in those who were categorized as immunocompromised.
After 180 days, effectiveness was not assessed.
The efficacy for children was not investigated as part of the study.
Data from the VISION Network, a US hospital network, was examined by CDC researchers. People younger than fifty who have received four or more outdated booster shots were excluded.
Only 23.5 percent of immune-compliant people and 16.4 percent of immune-compromised individuals received a COVID-19 vaccine, while the remainder had at least two injections of the vaccine.
According to CDC data, 8% of adult Americans are still unvaccinated, albeit this number may be greatly exaggerated.
Bivalent dosages “helped provide protection against COVID-19-associated hospitalization and critical disease,” according to the researchers, who also noted that “waning of protection was evidence in some groups.”
On Monday, Business Insider reported “Cases of another type of respiratory virus spiked this spring, just as COVID-19 and RSV rates were finally falling in the US.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 19.6% of antigen tests and nearly 11% of PCR tests for human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, were positive in the US in early March.
The nearly 11% of positive PCR cases is up 36% since before the COVID-19 pandemic when PCR tests for HMPV were coming back with a rate of 7% positivity, per CDC.
In contrast, COVID-19 cases were down nearly 30% at the beginning of March, according to the World Health Organization, and the number of people being hospitalized for RSV was down to 1.2 people per 100,000 in March from 4.5 people per 100,000 in January, according to CDC data.
Virus experts say this illness pattern looks a little more like the seasonality they typically saw in the US pre-pandemic, when RSV cases would spike first in the fall, then influenza would surge, and later in the season parainfluenzas and human metapneumovirus would circulate, into the spring.
