Estimated 5,800 ‘breakthrough’ COVID infections reported among 77 million people who are fully vaccinated

An estimated 5,800 people of the 77 million fully vaccinated against COVID-19 — about 0.0001% — have reported becoming sickened with the fast-spreading disease despite being inoculated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the figures on Thursday, vowing to keep “a close eye” on the so-called “breakthrough infections.” A spokesperson for the agency told NBC News that about 29% of the cases were asymptomatic while only about 7% resulted in hospitalizations, including 74 people who died.

So far, just over 40% of the breakthrough infections were in people 60 or older and 65% were female.

Health experts with the CDC said they are currently monitoring reported cases “for clustering by patient demographics, geographic location, time since vaccination, vaccine type or lot number, and SARS-CoV-2 lineage.”

“To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in case demographics or vaccine characteristics,” Kristen Nordlund of CDC Public Affairs told USA Today.

Doctors have also emphasized just how rare such breakthrough infections are while encouraging citizens to get vaccinated when the opportunity arises.

People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they receive their second dose of a two-dose vaccine, such as the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines, or two weeks after a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has been temporarily suspended in the United States over reports of blood clots.