Malé, Maldives – Local pediatrician Dr. Ahmed Faisal, urging the public to get vaccinated and highlighting the importance of getting vaccinated, has highlighted how the vaccines reduce the negative impacts of the Covid-19 virus and its new variant.
Retweeting a post by the World Health Organization (WHO) about Covid-19, Dr. Faisal highlighted that while the new variant takes less time and less amounts of virus to infect an individual, as well as has the capacity to infect those who have already been infected and those who have been vaccinated already, getting the incoluation is the best way to fight the virus, given that so far no cases among those fully vaccinated have been reported to have had gotten seriously ill, admitted or resulted in a fatality.
To understand why one might get infected despite getting the Covid-19 vaccine, we must understand the concept of efficacy. So far, no Covid-19 vaccine has been made to have an efficacy of 100 percent.
For example, the vaccine currently being administered in the Maldives is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine marketed as the Covishield vaccine. This vaccine has an efficacy of 63 percent, according to the interim report by WHO. This does not mean that an individual who got the vaccine still has a 37 percent chance of getting the vaccine. It means that the vaccine reduces the risk of infection by 63 percent in an entire population of those who have gotten the vaccine.
Maldives has currently reported to have vaccinated more than 20,000 individuals in the country via the national vaccination program ‘Covid-19 Dhifaau’ campaign which aims to vaccinate the entire population of the country who are eligible for the vaccine, within the upcoming six months.
