74% of cases are fully vaccinated in Massachusetts
“The war has changed,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged in an internal presentation that summarized the new findings about Delta, which led the agency to reimpose a mask mandate earlier this week in an urgent bid to keep the pandemic from spiking again across the U.S.
You have to look to the charming fishing village of Provincetown, Mass., at the tip of Cape Cod. An outbreak of several hundred cases there earlier this month alerted public health officials.
Earlier this month, news began to emerge of hundreds of cases stemming from Fourth of July festivities in Provincetown (pop. near 4000). Now test positivity rates were down to 6 percent, from a high of 15 percent some days before (833 people in the Provincetown cluster).
In the CDC study, which accounted for the first 469 cases in the cluster — the only ones the agency had time to study — 74 percent, or 346, occurred in fully vaccinated people. That has given rise to the fear of infections that break through the vaccines and cause people to become sick with COVID-19. Of those 346 people with breakthrough infections, 79 percent reported symptoms. But nobody died. Perhaps because those who celebrates were young gays (Provincetown is Mekka for them).
Provincetown has among the highest vaccination rates in the commonwealth [of Massachusetts], with nearly all residents age 12 and older fully vaccinated.
Provincetown could easily become a symbol of the next stage of the pandemic, in which high-vaccination communities grapple with rising case counts.
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