Local family experiences breakthrough cases

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn (WDEF) – With the exception of her young children who are too young for the vaccine, Amanda Pentiah’s family has been fully vaccinated since March of 2021.

Since then, they have been living their lives normally.

Amanda says that once the mask mandates were retired,  she found it difficult to persuade her kids to stay safe by wearing a mask.

“Once everyone wasn’t wearing a mask it’s hard socially on a kid to be like ‘you have to be the one that has to wear a mask,” says Amanda Pentiah, Breakthrough Covid-19 case

Unfamiliar with the delta variant and its infection rate, Amanda’s children reunited with family members and unknowingly became infected- which began a chain reaction resulting in multiple breakthrough cases within the family.

 “What a breakthrough is that you test positive after the vaccine,” says Dr. David Angus, CBS News Medical Contributor. 

 “To know how we all caught it in a short period of time-it’s really contagious. My kids are relatively healthy with no preexisting conditions but they were spreading it really fast and they got pretty sick. Every adult in our family is vaccinated and we are all still pretty sick. All of us have flu-like symptoms. I could only imagine what it would be like if we had not been vaccinated,” says Pentiah.

Health officials say that breakthrough cases with symptoms are possible– but rare—and that the vaccine is still working – decreasing the likelihood of hospitalization.

“75 to 85% of people that are exposed to covid after a double vaccination or full vaccination with J&J will not be symptomatic. If they are symptomatic it’s predominantly the upper respiratory tract, not the lower. By the way, lower respiratory infections in the lung are what get you hospitalized,” says Dr. Angus. 

Amanda says that as her family begins to move forward, they will go back to living life like before. Though they are grateful for the vaccine, they will all be wearing masks and refraining from gatherings. To stay up to date on all things Covid, click here.