Three fully vaccinated Hawaii residents test positive for Covid

‘It works in a huge percentage of people, but not everyone and that’s an important message’

Three fully vaccinated people in Hawaii have tested positive for Covid-19, with officials using the cases to highlight that everyone needs to continue being “careful” amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Hawaii’s state Department of Health announced last week that three people had tested positive for Covid-19, even though the individuals had been fully vaccinated with either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.

The department confirmed in a statement that none of the three people became severely ill after contracting the virus and did not appear to pass it on to anyone else, according to the New York Post.

One of the patients, a health care worker in Oahu, Hawaii, became fully vaccinated in early January and subsequently travelled to several US cities in February.

The health care worker and the person they travelled to the other cities with were tested for Covid-19 before they arrived back on the island, following the state’s travel protocols.

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However, they were not informed that they had tested positive until they returned to Hawaii, health officials said in the statement.

Lieutenant governor Josh Green told local news station KITV that the positive tests were not a cause for alarm, saying: “Remember, 95 per cent of people get immunity from the vaccines and 5 per cent don’t from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine.”

He added: “Some people are going to dive on to this and say, ‘oh, then the vaccine doesn’t work. No, it does work.’ It works in a huge percentage of people, but not everyone and that’s an important message.”

Although all of the three vaccines available in the US are effective at preventing Covid-19, no vaccine is 100 per cent effective and none were ever expected to be.

Dr Melinda Ashton of Hawaii Pacific Health told KITV that the results are a reminder for people to continue taking precautions while a majority of the population are still not vaccinated.

“Absolutely you need to be careful during those times when you’re in the airport, on the airplane, with other people in larger groups,” Dr Ashton added.

The US has so far administered more than 124 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, while at least 44 million people have been fully vaccinated, amounting to around 13 per cent of the population.

Hawaii is ahead of the US as a whole in vaccinations, as around 27 per cent of the state’s residents have been administered a dose and more than 16 per cent have been fully vaccinated.

Since the start of the pandemic, Hawaii has recorded close to 29,000 coronavirus cases and at least 451 deaths.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now more than 29.8 million people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached 542,524.