Thread by @firefoxx66

Headlines like the one circulating about India always need to be taken cautiously: until we have sequence data, speculation about a new variant or new mutations is entirely that - speculation.

But let's dig into what's being reported right now about 40,000 breakthroughs...

1/N

https://twitter.com/KlausRiede/status/1425475678372339718

Headlines are saying things like "40,000 breakthrough COVID cases". But what does breakthrough mean here? Most generally, at least in Western media, this is used to refer to infections in fully-vaccinated (commonly 2-dose) people.

2/N

However, 1 site reporting the 40,000 defines this as "people contracting the disease a second time or fully vaccinated".
Another implies this is infection after 1 or 2 doses.

3/N

indiatoday.in/coronavirus-ou…

news18.com/news/india/ker…

So lets look at all breakdowns:
According to Kerala's dashboard, 15,759,471 have 1 dose, 6,442,507 have 2 (these also seem to be included in 1 dose counts).

So, if 40,000 is out of fully vaccinated people, that would be 0.6% of vaccinated people.

4/N

dashboard.kerala.gov.in/covid/

If it's 40,000 out of everyone with 1 or more dose, that's 0.25% of vaccinated people.

If it's 40,000 out of everyone previously infected (3,415,595) or fully vaccinated (6,442,507) (assuming none of these people overlap), that's 0.4%.

5/N

Even though these numbers change a little bit depending on definition, the takeaway is that this is well within the expected efficacy of vaccines.

It's easy for big numbers to sound scary, but context matters! Here, the number of people vaccinated is much, much bigger!

6/N

Of course, ongoing genetic surveillance, including of breakthrough cases, remains critical for keeping an eye on new mutations & variants. But these numbers, in context, don't need a variant to explain them!

7/N