Longitudinal analysis of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections reveal limited infectious virus shedding and restricted tissue distribution.

Abstract

The global effort to vaccinate people against SARS-CoV-2 in the midst of an ongoing pandemic has raised questions about the nature of vaccine breakthrough infections and the potential for vaccinated individuals to transmit the virus. These questions have become even more urgent as new variants of concern with enhanced transmissibility, such as Delta, continue to emerge. To shed light on how vaccine breakthrough infections compare with infections in immunologically naive individuals, we examined viral dynamics and infectious virus shedding through daily longitudinal sampling in a small cohort of adults infected with SARS-CoV-2 at varying stages of vaccination. The durations of both infectious virus shedding and symptoms were significantly reduced in vaccinated individuals compared with unvaccinated individuals. We also observed that breakthrough infections are associated with strong tissue compartmentalization and are only detectable in saliva in some cases. These data indicate that vaccination shortens the duration of time of high transmission potential, minimizes symptom duration, and may restrict tissue dissemination.

• Authors: Ruian Ke, Pamela P Martinez, Rebecca L Smith, Laura L Gibson, Chad J Achenbach, Sally McFall, Chao Qi, Joshua Jacob, Etienne Dembele, Camille Bundy, Lacy M Simons, Egon A Ozer, Judd F Hultquist, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, Anita K Opdycke, Claudia Hawkins, Robert L Murphy, Agha Mirza, Madison Conte, Nicholas Gallagher, Chun Huai Luo, Junko Jarrett, Abigail Conte, Ruifeng Zhou, Mireille Farjo, Gloria Rendon, Christopher J Fields, Leyi Wang, Richard Fredrickson, Melinda E Baughman, Karen K Chiu, Hannah Choi, Kevin R Scardina, Alyssa N Owens, John Broach, Bruce Barton, Peter Lazar, Matthew L Robinson, Heba H Mostafa, Yukari C Manabe, Andrew Pekosz, David D McManus, Christopher B Brooke
• Journal: medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences (medRxiv) (Sep 02 2021) United States
• PMID: 34494028 (Publication Type: Preprint)