Around 40 per cent of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus in the UK have had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, announced Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser. At first glance this may seem like a serious alarm bell but it shouldn’t as the vaccines are still working very well.
There are various factors that explain why such a high proportion of cases are in the fully vaccinated. The vaccines are highly effective, but none 100 per cent so. It’s as same as the flu vaccines that aren’t 100 per cent effective either.
In the US alone flu vaccines are estimated to prevent millions of cases of illness, tens of thousands of hospitalisations and thousands of deaths every year. In the UK the COVID vaccines are doing the same currently all one has to do is comparison of the curves from the winter wave with those from this summer. As the cases are again surging in many parts of the world, the hospitalisations and deaths are rising too, but not at anywhere near the same level as they were in the winter.
COVID is also growing among the vaccinated because the number of people in the UK who have had both doses is continuing to rise. At the time of writing, 88 per cent of UK adults have had a first dose and 69 per cent a second. As more and more of the population is vaccinated, the relative proportion of those with COVID who have had both jabs will rise.
A time when UK case rates were similar to what they are now about 3,800 people were being admitted to hospital with COVID each day in the second half of December 2020 of which the average now is about 700. So though that’s still higher than we wish it was, it’s a lot lower than it was the last time we had this many infections.
If we imagine a hypothetical scenario in which 100 per cent of the population is double vaccinated, then 100 per cent of people with coronavirus, and in hospital with COVID, will also have had both doses. As with deaths, this doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t working. It just means the vaccine rollout is going very well.
The vaccine rollout in the UK has gradually focused people who are at the highest risk from COVID which we also need to remember at the same time. Once vaccinated, these people (including me) are at much lower risk from COVID than they would have been otherwise but they are still at risk, he said.
However, people with serious health conditions and older people can make them more vulnerable were the first to get vaccinated. Which means that if we compare people with both the vaccinations being hospitalised to those who haven’t had both doses, we aren’t comparing like with like. People with both vaccinations are more likely to be more vulnerable for getting infected with COVID-19 in the first place. This makes them both more likely to be hospitalised and more likely to have already received both of their vaccine doses.
Is COVID different in the vaccinated?
According to the latest data from Public Health England suggests that against the delta variant, which is now dominant in UK, two doses of any of the vaccines available in Britain are estimated to offer 79 per cent protection against symptomatic COVID and 96 per cent protection against hospitalisation.
We don’t have clear estimates yet from Public Health England on the level of protection against death caused by the delta variant fortunately, this is partly driven by the fact deaths have been relatively low during this third wave in the UK.
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