Don’t panic! Vaccines are working just as expected
MANY will be alarmed that despite being double-jabbed, Sajid Javid has tested positive for Covid-19. The Health Secretary is by no means a rare case: GPs across the country are seeing increasing numbers of fully inoculated patients catching the virus.
In fact, more than 15,500 partly or fully vaccinated people a day are reporting Covid symptoms, according to the latest research.
That number has soared by about 40 per cent in a week, says the ZOE Covid Symptom Study, which uses an app downloaded by at least three million people to track the disease.
Astonishingly, ZOE data suggests the number of new cases in vaccinated people – called ‘breakthrough’ infections – is set to outstrip unvaccinated cases within days.
So what is going on? Thankfully, the message from scientists and clinicians this weekend is reassuring: a jump in cases among the jabbed was always expected and does not mean vaccines are failing. While highly effective against preventing hospitalisation and deaths, both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs are markedly less effective at preventing any sign of infection. Put simply, the jabs are better at blunting the virus than snuffing it out completely.
Latest figures show two doses of AstraZeneca are 67 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic disease from the Indian – or Delta – variant that now accounts for almost all Covid cases in the UK, while two doses of Pfizer are 88 per cent effective.
In contrast, two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine cut the risk of hospitalisation by 92 per cent. The figure is 96 per cent for two doses of Pfizer.
Such figures are being borne out on the NHS front line: a growing
number of vaccinated people are displaying symptoms – but most are not falling seriously ill.
‘We are speaking to lots of Covidpositive patients who have had two vaccines,’ Dr Richard Cook, a GP in Sussex, told Pulse magazine last week. ‘Anecdotally they do not seem to be getting too unwell, and I’m not aware of any of ours being in hospital.’
Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, who leads the ZOE study, said: ‘In the UK, new cases in vaccinated people are still going up and will soon outpace unvaccinated cases. This is probably because we’re running out of unvaccinated susceptible people to infect as more and more people get the vaccine.
‘While the figures look worrying, it’s important to highlight that vaccines have massively reduced severe infections and post-vaccination Covid is a much milder disease for most people.’
NHS vaccination figures back up Prof Spector’s analysis – the pool of totally unvaccinated adults has shrunk from 20million three months ago to seven million now. Meanwhile, the number of doublejabbed people has risen from ten million to 35.7million.
Dr Raghib Ali, a senior clinical research associate in epidemiology at the University of Cambridge, said: ‘Inevitably, some people who are vaccinated will get infected. That’s clear.’
Mr Javid is not the first prominent individual to catch Covid despite being double-jabbed. Last month BBC journalist Andrew Marr, who had had the Pfizer jab, revealed he caught the virus while covering the G7 summit in Cornwall.
He said yesterday the infection had been ‘really, really horrid’, adding: ‘Even if you’re doublevaccinated, you don’t have superpowers – you can still get ill.’
When Marr asked Oxford University’s Covid expert Professor Sir Peter Horby in late June if he had simply been ‘unlucky’, the scientist agreed – but said as vaccination levels rose ‘the majority of infections’ would be in those jabbed.
‘That doesn’t mean the vaccines don’t work – breakthroughs are expected,’ Prof Horby added. ‘What we want to do is prevent hospitalisations and deaths, and the vaccines do that very effectively.’