By Zachary Stieber
More than 277,000 COVID-19 cases among people who received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2021 but not disclosed to the public, newly obtained files show.
Some 144,349 cases among partially vaccinated people were reported by 32 jurisdictions to the CDC across three months in 2021, according to some of the files, which were acquired by The Epoch Times through the Freedom of Information Act.
Partially vaccinated has been defined by the CDC as having received at least one dose of a vaccine. People were described as fully vaccinated if at least 14 days had elapsed since they completed a primary series.
The Moderna and Pfizer primary series consisted of two doses, while Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine consisted of one dose.
The cases were recorded in California, Maryland, New York, Texas, and 28 other jurisdictions in April 2021, May 2021, and June 2021 and reported to the CDC.
The CDC never disclosed the numbers to the public.
“These data on partially vaccinated persons were not reported publicly but rather, were collected to ensure that that they were being appropriately excluded from the numbers of vaccine breakthrough cases as described as a best practice on the CDC website,” staffers at the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases told The Epoch Times in a letter.
On a webpage advising state and local officials on how to analyze patterns of COVID-19 by vaccination status, the CDC recommends excluding or separately analyzing people who received only one Moderna or Pfizer dose.
That recommendation is “because only people that have received all of the recommended primary series doses and have had the required duration of time to form a protective immunological response after vaccination (14 days, per the definition) would be expected to receive the full benefit of the COVID-19 vaccination,” according to the CDC.
“In general, the immunological response to a primary vaccination series usually takes 2–4 weeks. Only partial protection is provided to partially vaccinated persons,” the agency stated.
Stopped Reporting
The CDC stopped reporting post-vaccination infections among the fully vaccinated, or breakthrough cases, in May 2021, after disclosing that 10,262 breakthrough infections were reported to the agency by 46 jurisdictions through April 30, 2021.
The agency noted that 995 of the cases resulted in hospitalization and 160 resulted in death.
The CDC stated that it shifted to reporting only breakthrough cases that resulted in hospitalization or death “to help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.”
It isn’t clear how many infections in the partially vaccinated that the CDC didn’t disclose earlier led to hospitalization or death.
Changed Definition
The CDC initially defined breakthrough cases as people who tested positive seven or more days after completing a primary series but changed the definition to testing positive at least 14 days after completion of a primary series.
“CDC made the change to the definition of a breakthrough infection time period due to the most current data that showed that the 14-day period was required for an effective antibody response to the vaccines,” a CDC spokesman told The Epoch Times recently via email.
The CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases falsely stated in the new letter that it never changed the definition.
“Since COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough surveillance began (January 2021), the definition of a breakthrough infection has been the same,” the center claimed.
The CDC hasn’t sent a correction as of yet. It has made other false claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of which remain uncorrected.
The CDC also stated that some of the partially vaccinated numbers were reported on one of its webpages, but a review of archived versions of that page didn’t show that to be the case. The page, which has been taken down, states that cases among the partially vaccinated were excluded.
Hid Other Cases
Another 133,000 post-vaccination cases occurred among Medicare beneficiaries through September 2021, according to Humetrix, a contractor that analyzed the data. The case count excluded partially vaccinated people.
Humetrix provided the data to the CDC in August 2021, according to other documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The CDC spoke in meetings with its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee after receiving those data but didn’t present it to either one.
The meetings resulted in the approval of Pfizer’s vaccine and the authorization of a Pfizer booster. The CDC then recommended both for wide swaths of the U.S. population.
The CDC declined to comment on withholding the Humetrix data.
