Fortsättning.
Interpretation
The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants. Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real world effectiveness of the vaccines.
For instance, in a report released from the Ministry of Health in Israel, the effectiveness of 2 doses of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine against preventing COVID-19 infection was reported to be 39% [
6], substantially lower than the trial efficacy of 96% [
7]. It is also emerging that immunity derived from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may not be as strong as immunity acquired through recovery from the COVID-19 virus [
8]. A substantial decline in immunity from mRNA vaccines 6-months post immunization has also been reported [
9]. Even though vaccinations offers protection to individuals against severe hospitalization and death, the CDC reported an increase from 0.01 to 9% and 0 to 15.1% (between January to May 2021) in the rates of hospitalizations and deaths, respectively, amongst the fully vaccinated [
10].
In summary, even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatizing populations can do more harm than good. Importantly, other non-pharmacological prevention efforts (e.g., the importance of basic public health hygiene with regards to maintaining safe distance or handwashing, promoting better frequent and cheaper forms of testing) needs to be renewed in order to strike the balance of learning to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.
Supplementary Information
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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 185 KB)(185K, docx)
Footnotes
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Change history
10/27/2021
The title of the Supplementary Table S1 has been corrected.
Article information
Eur J Epidemiol. 2021; 36(12): 1237–1240.
Published online 2021 Sep 30. doi:
10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
PMCID: PMC8481107
PMID:
34591202
S. V. Subramanian
1,2 and
Akhil Kumar3
1Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MA USA
2Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA
3Turner Fenton Secondary School, Brampton, ON Canada
S. V. Subramanian, Email:
ude.dravrah.hpsh@marbusvs.
Corresponding author.
Received 2021 Aug 17; Accepted 2021 Sep 9.
Copyright © Springer Nature B.V. 2021, corrected publication 2021
This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
See letter "
Re: Subramanian and Kumar. Vaccination rates and COVID-19 cases" in
Eur J Epidemiol, volume 36 on page 1241.
See letter "
Re: Subramanian and Kumar. Vaccination rates and COVID-19 cases" in
Eur J Epidemiol, volume 36 on page 1243.
See letter "
Re: Subramanian and Kumar. Vaccination rates and COVID-19 cases" in
Eur J Epidemiol, volume 36 on page 1245.