Breakthrough Infections, Long COVID And You

Short Wave

NPR

News, Life Sciences, Daily News, Nature, Science, Astronomy

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In rare cases, the delta variant of the coronavirus is causing vaccinated people to get sick — so-called "breakthrough infections." Now researchers are asking: Could these infections lead to long COVID, when symptoms last weeks and months? Today, science correspondent Rob Stein makes sense of the latest data, explaining what we know so far about long COVID in vaccinated people.

Read more of Rob's reporting here: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/09/13/1032844687/what-we-know-about-breakthrough-infections-and-long-covid

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:04.1	Hey everybody, Emily Kwong here with NPR Science Correspondent Rob Stein.
0:10.0	Hey Rob.
0:11.0	Hey there Emily.
0:12.0	Hey so today we're checking in on COVID long haulers.
0:16.5	These are folks with COVID symptoms that last weeks or months or folks who are getting
0:20.8	better but suddenly new symptoms emerge.
0:23.5	And Rob nowadays doctors are starting to describe this condition as long COVID right?
0:29.9	That's right, that's right.
0:30.9	It's not a really well defined, well understood condition but they can show up in people with
0:36.7	even mild symptoms.
0:38.7	And I wanted to take a look into whether it's also a word for people who get COVID after
0:43.9	they get vaccinated.
0:44.9	These so-called breakthrough infections.
0:46.9	Yeah, it's a good question.
0:48.9	So people getting COVID despite the vaccine is pretty rare.
0:54.2	The symptoms are usually mild but we're learning that sometimes even the mild cases can
0:59.2	make you feel pretty bad for a few days, right?
1:02.0	Yeah, so mild cases can make you feel pretty crumbly.
1:06.2	It's a big variation of what's considered a mild case.
1:09.8	And you know 178 million people are now fully vaccinated in the US as of September 12th.
1:15.6	The Centers for Disease Control Prevention says more than 14,000 fully vaccinated people
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.