Reasons behind COVID-19 infection among vaccinated people

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Professionals expressed worries among people who are already vaccinated and avoid COVID-19 precautionary guidance since they can still possibly get infected.
• Prof. Jonathan Gershoni laid down the reasons why a few vaccinated individuals still contract the virus.
• There was only 0.2 percent of COVID-19 infection among vaccinated people.

Health experts have displayed concerns over vaccinated people who became complacent after getting their doses, as they ignore wearing masks and do their normal routines without safety precautions.

According to Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University Prof. Jonathan Gershoni, there are few reasons behind contracting COVID-19 by a vaccinated person.

First, since Pfizer and Moderna vaccines post 95 percent efficacy against the virus, this would mean that one out of 20 people who got the shots could still get infected. The efficacy rate came from the computation of vaccinated people who still contracted the virus during the clinical trials, and not on the total number of those who received the doses.

The 95 percent efficacy does not also mean that five percent of the people in the clinical trial got the virus. The actual percentage was around 0.04 percent, based on an article released by Live Science.

Second, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were made to address the first COVID-19 strain that was genetically sequenced in Wuhan, China. Since then, however, the coronavirus has mutated and replicated into different variants. Some of them have proved to be more contagious and robust, that it could make the vaccine less effective.

“We know in Israel that now, the majority of infections are from the UK variant,” Gershoni said.

The vaccines were highly effective against the UK strain, but Gershoni noted that they are less effective against the South African variant. He also noted that there could be other strains that are more fatal and resistant to vaccines.

Another reason would be that either the disease or the vaccine makes a person’s body develop antibodies against the virus. If a person has an excessive viral load, the virus could potentially break through the formed protection and infect him/her. This case, though, would only yield a mild disease.

The fourth and final reason is that every individual has his or her own set of immunological or defense mechanisms.

“We know some people have a tendency to be very robust and stand up to infections, and other people can be a bit more sensitive,” Gershoni said. “When talking in terms of vaccinating five million people in Israel, you are seeing the full spectrum of people with various levels of immune competence.”

He noted though that, sometimes, people could get infected before they obtain their first or second dose.

“One has to put it into perspective,” he said. “Those who do get infected typically are not subject to devastating disease and death.”

Based on the recent Health Ministry tracking, only 4,711 out of the 3,387,340 contracted the virus after full vaccination (two doses plus seven days), with 0.2 percent as a mild disease.

Source: Jerusalem Post