Oregon officials identified 168 "breakthrough" cases -- coronavirus infections that occur two or more weeks after a person gets their last dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
It’s unclear how many, if any, of the breakthrough cases Oregon announced were caused by virus variants, Sutton said, though none of them are known to be.
State officials said many of the people with identified breakthrough cases reported no symptoms and were tested for other reasons, such as care-facility workers who must be screened at least once a month.
None of the three deaths was tied to a variant, the state said.
Oregon has now identified 294 cases driven by variants the federal government is concerned about.
That’s because the state identified the other 271 variant cases before federal health officials said those specific versions of the virus had to be monitored closely.
Lawmakers said the state should reveal how many such cases health investigators identified.