‘I Had Been Convinced That I Was Super Immune': California Man Tests Positive For Second Breakthrough Case

Travis Dagenais says he tested positive for the delta variant of the Coronavirus in July after completing his two-shot Moderna vaccine in April.

"There had been a lot of verbiage about mild cases, about very rare breakthrough cases, but at the time it was happening my personal and anecdotal reaction was less that these are very rare and these are very mild, it was more this feels quite severe. I'm fully vaccinated, yet I'm extremely ill," thirty-six-year-old Dagenais said.

Dagenais says after he tested positive and was fully vaccinated, he thought he was at less risk of getting Coronavirus again. Prior to his first case, Dagenais says he was following all the CDC guidance. He stayed indoors, wore a mask, and was socially distanced if he had to go outside. After his first case, he thought it was safe to modify his behavior.

"Part of why I resumed a lot of my normal activities at that point was a direct reaction to what we had known at that point from the CDC which was that fully vaccinated individuals were a bit safer to engage in certain activities. We were specifically permitted to congregate without masks on and the signal to me and a lot of others was that while the world was not back to normal we could at least start doing some of the things we enjoyed doing and loving before," he said.

This past Friday, Dagenais began experiencing mild Covid-like symptoms and out of an abundance of caution decided to take a Coronavirus test. He was shocked when he got positive results after taking more than one test.

This is now his second breakthrough case since being vaccinated, he says this time the symptoms are less severe than his breakthrough case in July. He does not know yet if this case is the Omicron variant, he is awaiting results that could identify the strain based on sequencing.

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Dagenais says he's frustrated about testing positive again because he was under the impression that it would be unlikely given the fact that he had already had Covid and he was fully vaccinated.

"I had been convinced that I was 'super immune'. The language out there, the science out there was indicating that if you had Covid and you had the protection of being fully vaccinated you had what was considered super immunity, I do not feel super immune having come down with Covid for the second time," he said.

Dagenais plans to follow CDC guidance and isolate for 10 days since he experienced his first symptoms of this second breakthrough case.

"Part of the reason I’m going to take my isolation seriously despite feeling relatively fine is that I don’t want my bad cold to be somebody else's death sentence and because so many of the effects of Covid are interlinked: my bad cold could become somebody's death sentence, my headache could spread and become infectious to ten, twelve, twenty, people because these decisions do affect all of us," he said.

Dagenais had planned to get his booster shot on Monday, Dec. 20, but now has to postpone it because he has tested positive.