'We're going to see more': Man tests positive for COVID-19 after getting vaccine dose

Mission Viejo, CA (WBFF) — A California man has contracted coronavirus after being fully immunized with the Pfizer vaccine.

Health experts warn this could become more common with the variants that have emerged in the pandemic.

"Yesterday I got a phone call from the Orange County Health Department,” said Gary Michael.

And the information this Lake Forest man was given wasn't at all what he was expecting.

"They told me that yes, I'm positive with coronavirus and they went through my symptoms and the precautions of what I should do as far as quarantine,” said Michael.

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None of this would be out of the ordinary except for the fact that Michael has received both of his COVID-19 vaccines.

His first Pfizer shot was on December 28, followed by a second vaccine on January 18.

Three weeks have now passed since those vaccinations, yet when Michael was COVID tested at Mission Hospital on Saturday, where he came for an unrelated health issue, he says he tested back positive.

Dr. Tirso del Junco is the Chief Medical Officer for 7 southern California hospitals, including OC Global Medical Center in Santa Ana.

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"You might be surprised by this man's story, this patient's story. I'm not. It's not the first one I’ve heard of. I think I’ve heard of 6 or 7 independent cases in the last three weeks of people vaccinated with different timelines who have been vaccinated, who have tested positive. I think we’re going to continue to see that more and more,” said Dr. del Junco.

It's why doctors urge people to keep their masks on whether they've been vaccinated or not.

New mutant COVID strains are spreading in the country.

"And we're going to truly understand the effectiveness and how long these vaccines are effective, number 1. Number 2, as soon as we started vaccine program is when we started hearing about these mutant strains. We have three aggressive mutant strains now that people keep talking about and that's long after we started this vaccination process,” the doctor said.

Gary Michael’s live-in girlfriend did test positive for coronavirus 5 days after he received his second Pfizer dose.

His case is relatively minor.