More Than 277,000 COVID Vaccine Breakthrough Cases in 2021 Were Hidden from Public by CDC

More than 277,000 COVID-19 breakthrough cases were hidden by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from its 2021 data—making vaccines look more effective than they actually were. Most of the cases occurred during three months from April to June.

A vaccine breakthrough case occurs when someone tests positive for COVID-19 at least 14 days after being fully vaccinated. People with vaccine breakthrough infections may spread the virus and infect others. The CDC has since entirely removed information regarding breakthrough cases from its website, but an archived version of the webpage is available here.

According to documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, 32 jurisdictions also reported about 144,349 cases of COVID-19 among partially vaccinated people to the CDC.

An individual is considered partially vaccinated if they’ve received at least one dose of an mRNA vaccine, whereas a fully vaccinated person is one who completed a two-dose primary series of Pfizer or Moderna or received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot and at least 14 days have passed.

“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,” the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases told The Epoch Times in a letter.

Despite reporting breakthrough cases of COVID-19 on its website, the CDC never disclosed the complete numbers to the public but instead continued to perpetuate the false narrative that COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection and transmission of the virus to others.

In May 2021, the CDC stopped tracking all vaccine breakthrough cases and instead switched to only tracking cases that resulted in hospitalization or death.

At the time, the CDC said it shifted to reporting only 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.” Yet anyone tracking breakthrough cases knew it was likely because the number of fully vaccinated individuals getting infected was growing exponentially, challenging the claims that COVID vaccines were 95% effective at preventing infection.

Shortly after that statement, the CDC stopped reporting on breakthrough cases entirely. Nobody but the CDC knows how many people were hospitalized or died from COVID-19 despite being partially or fully vaccinated.

In addition to playing games with the breakthrough case numbers, the CDC also attempted to change the definition of breakthrough cases—arguably to make vaccines look more effective. The agency initially defined breakthrough cases of COVID-19 as those that occurred in people who tested positive at least seven days after completing the primary series.

“CDC made the change to the definition of a breakthrough infection period due to the most current data that showed that the 14-day period was required for an effective antibody response to the vaccines,” according to a CDC spokesman.

The CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases has since falsely stated that it never changed the definition, according to the letter obtained by The Epoch Times in response to its FOIA request.

“Since COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough surveillance began (January 2021), the definition of a breakthrough infection has been the same,” the agency claimed. The CDC has made numerous other false claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of which remain uncorrected.

The CDC also stated that some of the partially vaccinated numbers were reported on one of its web pages, but a review of archived versions didn’t show that to be the case. The page, which has been taken down, states that cases among the partially vaccinated were excluded.

An additional 133,000 breakthrough cases occurred among Medicare beneficiaries through Sep. 2021, according to Humetrix, who provided the data to the CDC in August 2021. According to other FOIA documents, there’s no indication the CDC included those numbers in its count, nor did it present those breakthrough numbers during a meeting of its vaccine advisory panel that signed off on full approval of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and its booster.