More than 277,000 COVID-19 cases among people who received COVID-19 vaccines 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 a person who 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 consisted of one dose.
The cases were recorded in California, Maryland, New York, Texas, and 28 other jurisdictions in April, May, 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 people who only received one Moderna or Pfizer dose or analyzing them separately.
The exclusion is recommended "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," the CDC said. "In general, the immunological response to a primary vaccination series usually takes 2–4 weeks. Only partial protection is provided to partially vaccinated persons."
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 CDC said that 995 of the cases resulted in hospitalization and 160 resulted in death.
The CDC said it shifted to only reporting 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's not clear how many infections in the partially vaccinated that the CDC did not disclose before led to hospitalization or death.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 25, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
Changed Definition
The CDC initially defined a breakthrough case 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 after emailing about "vaccine failure," documents obtained by The Epoch Times showed.
"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 said 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 has not 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 said that some of the partially vaccinated numbers were reported on one of its webpages, but a review of archived versions of that page did not show that to be the case. The page, which has been taken down, said 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 the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the CDC's panel of vaccine advisers, and the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, after receiving that data but did not 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.
