RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to data from Public Health England, 117 deaths among the 92,000 cases of this variant were recorded up to June 21, and almost half of them had been administered two doses of one of the authorized vaccines.
Scientific explanations
While the world is racing to immunize the majority of the population before the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 becomes dominant, in countries where vaccination percentages are high, deaths are starting to be reported among fully vaccinated people.
This is the case in the United Kingdom, the first country to authorize an emergency vaccine and begin to administer it on a massive scale.
According to Public Health England data, 117 deaths occurred among the 92,000 Delta cases registered up to June 21. Fifty of them, 43%, had been fully immunized with two doses of one of the vaccines available in the country.
In proportional figures, only 0.12% of the total number of people infected by the variant causing global concern died, and 0.05% were fully vaccinated.
Thus, although almost half of all deaths from the Delta variant of the coronavirus in the UK are people who had completed their vaccination schedules, both doctors and scientists do not believe that the apparently high proportion of deaths among the vaccinated population is cause for alarm.
An article in The Wall Street Journal discussed the UK as a testing ground for how vaccines work. Delta is sweeping the country, with 146,000 cases identified last week, up 72% from the week before.
The UK is also a world leader in identifying the prevalent variants of the virus through genetic testing and sequencing: as of mid-June, 97% of cases were Delta infections. And likewise, the mutation that emerged in India is spreading in a population with one of the world’s highest vaccination rates: 85% of adults have been administered at least one shot and 63% have been fully immunized.
And while the Delta surge prompted the UK government to defer the end of Covid-19 restrictions by a month until July 19, scientists say these figures support the efficacy of vaccines.
Scientists have offered three main reasons for vaccine efficacy
First, as is well known, vaccines are not 100% effective and not all vaccinees will respond the same way. “The elderly or people with compromised immune systems, impaired or suffering from other illnesses, are less likely to have a strong response than someone who is younger and in better health,” said the U.S. media outlet.
Although Covid-19 vaccines have proven highly effective, some people will remain vulnerable to the virus even after being administered the two doses.
Secondly, according to the experts, “the risk of dying from Covid-19 increases considerably with age”. So if a vaccine reduces an 80-year-old’s risk of death from Covid-19 by 95%, for example, that 80-year-old’s risk of death could still be higher than the risk faced by an unvaccinated 20-year-old. Some chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and pulmonary conditions are also associated with an increased risk of serious illness and death.
Finally, the specialists consulted agreed that “as more people are vaccinated, there are fewer unvaccinated people for the virus to infect. If the group of vaccinated individuals is larger than the group of unvaccinated, then it is possible and even likely that infections leading to death in the older vaccinated group will equal or exceed deaths among the younger unvaccinated group.”
Of the 50 deaths among fully vaccinated people in England, all occurred in patients over the age of 50, the data showed, noting that no deaths were recorded in doubly vaccinated people under that age.
“Vaccines are about 90% effective. There is a group of people with inadequate protection, despite being vaccinated. This is true for all diseases, such as measles, smallpox, rubella, polio, etc., where vaccines are not fully effective. Even bacterial or BCG vaccines have low efficacy, but they still occur. If we protect 90% of the population against Covid-19, we are preventing them from being at high risk, as is the case today, with many infections per day and deaths,” explained Ricardo Teijeiro, an infectologist and member of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases (SADI).
He added: “Regarding those who died despite being vaccinated, their medical condition must also be assessed. If they had comorbidities, or a disease that may predispose them to suffer from a severe form of Covid. If they are asthmatic, immunosuppressed, diabetic, etc. Medicine is not just numbers. Vaccination is the only effective tool to overcome this pandemic. In some countries in the world, such as Israel or the United Kingdom, it is now under control and no deaths are reported per day. The same is occurring in some U.S. states.”
However, other specialists rely on what science called “antibody-dependent enhancement” to explain the deaths of immunized people.
“Covid-19 vaccines designed to trigger neutralizing antibodies may sensitize vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if unvaccinated,” according to a study published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, “vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data produced in the development and trials of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern.”
According to researchers, “empirically designed vaccines using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralizing antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen Covid-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).”
Apparently, all previous efforts to develop vaccines against coronaviruses, including SARS, MERS and respiratory syncytial virus – another RNA virus – showed that vaccines tend to cause worse disease. It means that instead of enhancing an individual’s immunity against infection, the vaccine actually enhances the virus’s ability to enter and infect cells, causing more severe disease.
Once again, and as SARS-CoV-2 seems to have taught both physicians and the general public, only time will shed light on the doubts that, a year and a half after the pandemic, continue to emerge and remain to be clarified.
Source: Infobae