About half the Omicron cases in a major hospital system in Texas have been among the vaccinated, according to a new study funded in part by the U.S. government. Researchers with Houston Methodist Hospital and other institutions performed genome sequencing of patients with COVID-19 in the Houston area and identified 862 people with symptoms whose infections were caused by Omicron, a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, or SARS-CoV-2. The infections were recorded from late November 2021 to Dec. 18, 2021. Of the patients, 430 met the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) definition of a breakthrough case, or a COVID-19 case that occurs among vaccinated people. Most of the patients, 299, received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine; the rest received either a Moderna primary series or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The percentage of patients being vaccinated was much higher for Omicron than for the Alpha …