With the highly contagious Delta variant dominating and community transmission levels high, Los Angeles County is seeing an increase in breakthrough COVID-19 cases.
“There's more virus circulating, so this is to be expected," said county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
Ferrer said that while fully vaccinated people are much less likely to get infected, they accounted for 30 percent of the cases and 13 percent of the hospitalizations reported in July. The median age for those patients was 65.
"Oftentimes [people getting breakthrough COVID-19 cases] have immunocompromised systems. They often have a fair number of underlying health conditions and, again, for some of them, you’ve got the issue that they could use that third dose or they could have used that third dose," said Ferrer.
"[Third doses] might help bring some of these numbers down."
Third-dose shots were recently authorized for some immunocompromised people. The Biden administration is expected to announce that most Americans will need a booster shot eight months after being fully vaccinated.
“For others, we may be starting to see a little bit of the waning of protection. Data coming out of Israel suggests that this is particularly more acute with older people,” she added.
Among more than 5.1 million fully vaccinated people in the county, only 742 have been hospitalized. That's less than 1 percent.