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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

...The trend is raising questions about the ethics of allocating a scarce resource to people who have chosen not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

"They are accumulating on a steady basis. So it's very much a real thing," says David Klassen, chief medical officer for UNOS.

"If there were more lungs available for transplants, I believe the numbers would be greater than they are," he says.

In all, 238 people across the country have received lung transplants due to COVID-19 since the first such operations were tracked in August of 2020, according to the latest UNOS figures from October of this year.

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The rise in COVID-related transplants is forcing doctors to grapple with how to best manage who gets them, especially now that vaccines are widely available.

"When somebody contracts such severe COVID that they need a lung transplant, and they got it refusing to get a vaccine, it's a really ethical dilemma," says Mulligan. "How can they just jump in and take a lung away from somebody who's sick, but has been doing the best they can to take care of themselves and avoid getting COVID?"

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About 1% of vaccinated people overall got a breakthrough infection, with 0.1% of the vaccinated general population hospitalized for a breakthrough case.

9% to 15% of people who have a breakthrough infection of COVID-19 end up hospitalized, with Pfizer vaccinated patients showing the 9% trend and Johnson & Johnson patients at 15%.

Of all high-risk conditions studied, patients with chronic kidney disease required hospitalization the most: One in four members of this group wound up hospitalized after a breakthrough infection.

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How Pfizer developed a COVID pill in record time

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Pfizer on Tuesday said final analysis of its antiviral Covid-19 pill still showed near 90% efficacy in preventing hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients, and recent lab data suggests the drug retains its effectiveness against the fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The U.S. drugmaker last month said the oral medicine was around 89% effective in preventing hospitalizations or deaths when compared to placebo based on interim results in around 1,200 people. The data disclosed on Tuesday includes an additional 1,000 people.

Nobody in the trial who received the Pfizer treatment died, compared with 12 deaths among placebo recipients.

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Pfizer also released early data from a second clinical trial showing that the treatment reduced hospitalizations by around 70% in around 600 standard-risk adults.

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Breakthrough infections greatly enhance immune response to variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a newly published study from Oregon Health & Science University.

The laboratory results, published online ahead of print today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reveal that a breakthrough infection generates a robust immune response against the delta variant. Authors say the findings suggest the immune response is likely to be highly effective against other variants as the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate.

The study is the first to use live SARS-CoV-2 variants to measure cross-neutralization of blood serum from breakthrough cases.

"You can't get a better immune response than this," said senior author Fikadu Tafesse, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine. "These vaccines are very effective against severe disease. Our study suggests that individuals who are vaccinated and then exposed to a breakthrough infection have super immunity."

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There is currently no evidence that the new Covid-19 omicron variant is any less severe than the delta variant, according to the early findings of a study by the U.K.’s Imperial College London.

“The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection,” a research team led by professor Neil Ferguson said Friday in a blog post accompanying the study.

The study used the data from the U.K. Health Security Agency and the U.K.’s health service for all PCR-confirmed Covid cases in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11.

However, the data included only 24 hospitalizations of patients suspected of having the omicron variant, with researchers saying “hospitalisation data remains very limited at this time.” The study is yet to be peer-reviewed.

The study estimates that the risk of reinfection with the omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the delta variant.