Dr. Ed addresses masks, breakthrough cases

EAST TEXAS (KLTV/KTRE) - Today, Infectious Disease Specialist Doctor Ed Dominguez joined us on East Texas Now to answer more viewer questions about COVID-19.

He addressed things such as the effectiveness of masks as well as deaths in people who received breakthrough infections of COVID-19.

Dr. Ed was asked about studies which show the effectiveness of masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19. He said to this date, there are no good studies which show masks are not effective.

“I can on the other hand point you to a study of over 350,000 people that was just completed and reported on by Stanford and Yale University Medical Schools.”

The study which took place in Bangladesh showed that using surgical masks was very effective as opposed to no masks at all.

“It also showed that cloth masks were better than no masks, but they were not as good as surgical masks.”

Doctor Ed also addressed breakthrough infection deaths. While he acknowledged there had been deaths, he also said this.

“The deaths are very very rare and the ones that are occurring are usually in the high risk individuals.”

Doctor Ed shared his experience with a group of patients who fall into this high-risk category: transplant patients.

“The reason that we think that they got COVID and subsequently expired from it was because they never broke through, they never developed the antibody to begin with.

Only about 17 percent of people who get vaccinated after transplant develop with at least the Pfizer vaccine develop adequate antibody to the delta variant.”

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