The New York Yankees (Yankees) announced recently that the team has the eighth player who has completed vaccinations but still detected the COVID-19 virus, sparking concern that it may be a “vaccine breakthrough,” but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said it needs more data to clarify the situation. The CDC says it needs more reported data to clarify the situation.
On Thursday (13), the Yankees website first reported that Gleyber Torres, the team’s shortstop, had tested positive for COVID-19, the eighth player to contract the disease in the offseason.
However, Torres had been infected with COVID-19 as early as last December and was included in the list of players infected with the disease. The eight players infected with the disease, including Torres, all tested positive for the virus after completing their vaccinations and were therefore considered vaccine busters, and seven of them were asymptomatic patients with the disease.
Despite the team’s vaccination, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman “believes the vaccine is working” and said that seven of the eight infected players are asymptomatic and would not have been found to have the virus if they had not been tested.
Currently, Major League Baseball (MLB) medical experts and the New York State Department of Health are providing consultation and assistance to the Yankees and have asked the Yankees to undergo additional testing and contact tracing.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said MLB had contacted the CDC on Thursday. According to ABC7 that day, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said, “We still need to know more about the Yankees.”
CDC Director Walensky said, “Six of the seven reported infections were indeed asymptomatic infections, and we’ll get more data from the reports to understand what’s happening there. We’re seeing realistic data from the published literature, and many large-scale studies in different settings have shown that vaccines are effective and have high efficacy against outbreaks.”
The state Department of Health also issued a statement saying it is confirming whether this instance of eight Yankees players contracting the epidemic despite being vaccinated meets the CDC’s definition of a vaccine bust.
The statement noted, “Anecdotal reports indicate that the Yankees players tested positive for the virus 14 days or more after receiving their last dose of vaccine, and the state Department of Health is further investigating these Yankees-related cases to confirm whether they meet the CDC’s definition of a vaccine bust.”
According to the CDC’s website, a small percentage of people who have been exposed to the virus can contract COVID-19 even if the vaccine is effective, and these cases are known as vaccine breakthrough cases These cases are called “vaccine breakthrough cases,” meaning that although people are much less likely to contract the disease after vaccination, it can still happen.
The Associated Press reported on the 14th, the Yankees manager Aaron Boone (Aaron Boone) that the phenomenon of players contracting the disease after vaccination was indeed unexpected, and said that the Major League Baseball (MLB), which is responsible for player testing, is investigating, but he also loosely suspected that the players may have contracted a variant of the virus.
The Yankees’ official website news noted that in early April, most Yankees players were at Yankee Stadium (Yankees Stadium), receiving only one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (Johnson & Johnson) from the medical staff at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
In late April, the Yankees were allowed to relax the protocol for players to use the Yankees’ clubhouse, baseball player rest areas and other venues because they met the 85 percent target threshold for vaccination; however, Yankees manager Aaron Boone and many other uniformed staff members still wear masks during games.
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