Even as highly contagious coronavirus variants continue to emerge, virologists and immunologists have been clear that vaccines are not only preventing serious infections but also curbing transmission as well.
By Shelton Muchena
However, that doesn’t mean that vaccinated people are already protecting billions shunning or failing to access the life saving jab globally.
“Most vaccines are working very efficiently to prevent onward transmission from the vaccinated infected person to a non-vaccinated person,” said Dr Tinashe Gebe a specialist physician in the Covid-19 unit Red zone.
In various countries where vaccination efforts are rolling out widely, there are some clear trends emerging: severe cases of COVID-19 are going down as vaccination rates go up; “breakthrough infections” among fully vaccinated individuals remain rare and typically mild; and cases of serious illness leading to hospitalization or death are now largely appearing among unvaccinated populations.
It all backs up the protective power of this first crop of vaccines at a time when much of the world is reopening, including Zimbabwe.
But with so many unvaccinated people around the world, and because of the transmissibility of variants such as delta, this virus keeps on spreading, Iwasaki said.
“The whole concept behind herd immunity is to provide that protection in the unvaccinated people by having enough vaccinated people around them,” she said.
“But I think we can’t be complacent, because that kind of herd immunity really requires large numbers of people to be vaccinated within a given population. And many places have not achieved that yet.”
