‘Virus impact varies’

MANY people who get COVID-19 get a mild impact of the disease but this does not mean everyone will have the same experience, says Health Ministry head of health protection Dr Aalisha Sahukhan.

“Over three million people have died worldwide because it’s so transmissible, it’s just got that balance right where it’s got that high level of transmissibility and it kills just enough people and hospitalises enough people where it can actually overwhelm healthcare systems and it has in some of the most developed countries in the world,” she said.

Dr Sahukhan said 1 to 2 per cent across populations would die from the virus and due to the high prevalence of non-communicable diseases, it was critical everyone got vaccinated.

“One factor as well that we know we have is that we have quite a high number of people with comorbidities so chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and we know that those are also risk factors for severe disease so far, while we haven’t been seeing that wave of severe disease that we expect.

“Why we’re really asking everybody in Fiji, please get vaccinated because we do need to protect everybody.

“Right now, we may have young people getting the virus but they are spreading it within their households, within the villages, within the communities, and they will spread it to people who have these chronic conditions and if they get the virus, they have a much higher risk of getting the severe form of the illness that the virus causes.”

University of Otago immunologist and clinical microbiologist James Ussher said the degree of early control of virus replication determined the symptoms.

“We do know that about maybe a third of people may be asymptomatic and we know it varies, depending upon the studies,” he said.

“If the immune response, particularly the early innate immune response, is able to adequately control the virus replication, then we may not have enough tissue damage or enough inflammatory mediators released to cause us symptoms so probably relates to the degree of early control of virus replication in the signals that are provided by the united immune response that determine whether we develop symptoms.”

... it’s just got that balance right where it’s got that high level of transmissibility and it kills just enough people and hospitalises enough people where it can actually overwhelm healthcare systems and it has in some of the most developed countries in the world ... – Dr Aalisha Sahukhan