Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

April 22, 2021

Vaccine Breakthrough Infections with SARS-CoV-2 Variants

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  • 2 SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections (infection >= 14 days after the second vaccine dose) were detected in a cohort of 417 employees at the Rockefeller University in New York City. Clinical symptoms of COVID-19 developed 19 days after Patient 1 (51-year-old woman) received their second dose of the Moderna vaccine, and 36 days after Patient 2 (65-year old woman) received their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Both patients were healthy and had typical clinical responses to the second dose. Viral genome sequences from both patients show that neither was infected with wild-type SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, the sequence from Patient 1 contained spike mutations including E484K, which is known to confer resistance to neutralizing antibodies. The sequences did not precisely fit any known clade.

Hacisuleyman et al. (Apr 21, 2021). Vaccine Breakthrough Infections with SARS-CoV-2 Variants. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2105000