Mass. Has 3,704 New Breakthrough Cases, 13 More COVID Deaths Among Vaccinated

Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported more than 3,700 new breakthrough cases over the past week and 13 more deaths.

In the last week, 3,074 new breakthrough cases -- infections in people who have been vaccinated -- were reported, with 80 more people hospitalized, Massachusetts Department of Public Health officials said Tuesday. That brings the total to 19,443 cases and 144 deaths in people with breakthrough infections.

Both figures remain a tiny percentage of the total number of all people who have been vaccinated -- just 0.01% of vaccinated people are hospitalized, and 0.43% have been infected. An even smaller percentage has died: 0.003%. The report also doesn't indicate how many of the breakthrough cases are in people with underlying conditions, though it also notes that "may be undercounted due to discrepancies" in records.

While vaccinated people are getting COVID-19, the virus' effects are severely blunted in them, and breakthrough cases rarely lead to hospitalizations or deaths. That's why public health officials worldwide continue to stress the importance of vaccination. (If you still need to be vaccinated, here's a tool to find the closest vaccination provider to your home.)

Another 1,557 confirmed coronavirus cases and 17 new deaths were also reported on Tuesday, pushing the state's number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 709,599 since the start of the pandemic and its death toll to 17,874.

Massachusetts' COVID metrics, tracked on the Department of Public Health's interactive coronavirus dashboard, have been far lower than they were several months ago, though some have been rising in recent weeks.

Massachusetts' seven-day average of positive tests ticked up to 2.61% on Tuesday. It was once above 30%, but had dropped under 0.5% until the delta variant began surging in the state.

The number of patients in Massachusetts hospitals with confirmed COVID-19 cases fell to 591; the figure was once nearly 4,000, but reached under an average of 85 in July. Of those currently hospitalized, 168 are vaccinated, 163 are in intensive care units and 100 are intubated.

Nearly 9.2 million vaccine doses have been administered in Massachusetts as of Tuesday. That includes nearly 4.7 million first shots and just under 4.2 million second shots of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. There have been more than 302,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered.

Health officials on Tuesday reported that a total of 4,500,183 Bay State residents have been fully vaccinated.