Covid breakthrough infections are extremely rare and possibly more likely to happen to women. A breakthrough infection is defined as an infection which occurs at least two weeks past your last shot, be it the two dose Pfizer or Moderna regimen or the one dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
605 thousand people have been fully vaccinated in Travis county and there have been 158 breakthrough cases. 109 have been in women. Dr. Rodney E. Rohde is Professor and Chair of the Clinical Laboratory Science program at Texas State University says there's not yet enough information to say women are more likely to get infected. "Like most things coronavirus, it's still happening in real time. But it's kind of an interesting blip on the data, if you look at the US data about 63% of these breakthrough infections are occurring in women."
Dr. Rohde says in general more women have been vaccinated then men. "When you have that type of data, a bigger population of one sex or the another, you could just be seeing an anomaly."
He says historically women tend to respond better to vaccines, but that's not happening here.
Dr. Rohde says Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson's shot have a little better efficacy in men and two to three percentage points lower in women. "When you hear the 95% efficacy rate for Pfizer, than the average. In reality it's about 3% higher in men than in women."
He says there could be biological issues we have yet to understand.
The other reason could be who gets tested. "In general not only have more women been vaccinated than men, but women are also more inclined to seek out testing. You have to tested to know if you have a breakthrough to begin with. They are also more likely to report their illness. Those are the kind of things that may be affecting the data."
He stresses breakthrough infections are extremely rate. "The vaccines protect us not only from severe illness and hospitalization, but it lowers mortality significantly. Vaccination is important, the sooner the better. These vaccinations are showing protection against all five variants circulating in the US."
He says the odds of anyone having a breakthrough infection is less than 0.5%.
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