Jabbed Indonesian health workers fall ill
JAKARTA (Reuters) – More than 350 doctors and medical workers have caught COVID-19 in Indonesia despite being vaccinated with Sinovac and dozens have been hospitalized, officials said, as concerns grow about the efficacy of some vaccines against more infectious variants.
Most of the workers were asymptomatic and self-isolating at home, said Badai Ismoyo, head of the health office in the district of Kudus in central Java, but dozens were in hospital with high fevers and declining oxygen saturation levels.
Kudus, which has about 5,000 healthcare workers, is battling an outbreak believed to be driven by the more transmissible Delta variant which has pushed up its bed occupancy rates above 90 percent.
Designated as a priority group, healthcare workers were among the first to be vaccinated when inoculations began in January.
Almost all have received the COVID vaccine developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac, the Indonesian Medical Association says.
While the number of Indonesian healthcare workers dying from coronavirus has dropped sharply from 158 in January to 13 in May, according to data initiative group LaporCOVID-19, public health experts say the Java hospitalizations are cause for concern.
“The data shows they have the Delta variant (in Kudus) so it is no surprise that the breakthrough infection is higher than before, because, as we know, the majority of healthcare workers in Indonesia got Sinovac, and we still don’t know yet how effective it is in the real world against the Delta variant,” said Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist at Australia’s Griffith University.
Spokespersons from Sinovac and Indonesia’s ministry of health were not immediately available for comment on the efficacy of the Chinese firm’s CoronaVac against newer variants of the virus.
The World Health Organization approved the emergency use of Sinovac’s vaccine this month, saying results showed it prevented symptomatic disease in 51 percent of recipients and prevented severe COVID and hospital stays in all of those studied.
As Indonesia grappled with one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, registering more than 1.9 million infections and 53,000 deaths, its doctors and nurses suffered a heavy toll of 946 deaths.
Across Indonesia, at least five doctors and one nurse have died from coronavirus despite being vaccinated, according to the Data Initiative Group (IDG), although one had only received a first shot.
In Kudus, one senior doctor has died. In Jakarta, the capital, radiologist Dr. Prijo Sidipratomo told Reuters he knew of at least half a dozen doctors who had been hospitalized with COVID in the past month, despite being vaccinated, with one now being treated in an ICU.
Meanwhile, in Japan, the government announced yesterday that it would ease emergency coronavirus curbs in nine prefectures, including Tokyo. The state of emergency had been set to expire on Sunday.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that authorities were lifting a state of emergency for Tokyo and eight other places, but would maintain “quasi-emergency” measures in seven prefectures. The Games, postponed last year, are due to start on July 23.
Meanwhile in Australia, the government recommended that AstraZeneca’s coronavirus jab should not be given to people under 60 yesterday, a fresh blow to the country’s glacial vaccine rollout.
Health minister Greg Hunt said concerns over possible links to blood clots meant Pfizer was now “the preferred vaccine” for everyone under 60 years old.
Yesterday’s further restriction came after a 52-year-old woman died of blood clotting after receiving the jab.