Doctors say COVID vaccines are protecting people from getting seriously sick and dying, but the Houston Health Department is seeing a spike in people who are vaccinated still getting infected.
“About 1 percent of people who had been vaccinated were subsequently testing positive across the Houston area, so that’s 2.3 million people," said Dr. David Persse, Chief Medical Officer for the City of Houston. "What we found in the last couple weeks is that that has gone up.”
That’s thanks to the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19. Dr. Persse says breakthrough infections are happening with some people after the booster dose.
“For the folks vaccinated but not boosted, it’s about five times higher,” he said.
He says the Houston Health Department is working with hospitals to figure out if any breakthrough infections are leading to serious illnesses.
So far, Dr. Persse says it does seem like a booster dose is giving extra protection against the most contagious version of the virus yet.
“For anyone vaccinated but not yet boosted, you need to go get boosted now,” said Dr. Persse.