Vaccinated people heal faster from covid if they do become infected. But the amount of virus they carry at the peak of infectiousness is just as great as in the unvaccinated. That may explain why vaccinated people also easily pass on the virus within their households, researchers write in a study published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Within the households that were studied, it turned out that 25 percent of all vaccinated people who had contact with an infected person became infected themselves. This was 38 percent of the unvaccinated. It was already known that a covid vaccine is no guarantee against infection and transmission.
‘Vaccines are critical to containment of the pandemic’
In the study, researchers looked at 621 households in the United Kingdom between September 2020 and September 2021. That country is mainly vaccinated with AstraZeneca, in the Netherlands Pfizer is the most commonly used vaccine. In addition, the new study focused only on infected individuals with asymptomatic or mild infections.
The study was conducted by researchers from Imperial College London, University of Oxford, University of Surrey, Public Health England and the Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre, all in the United Kingdom. One of the leaders was Professor Ajit Lalvani of Imperial College London. She emphasizes that ‘vaccines are critical to controlling the pandemic’.
A quick third shot for people with a weakened immune system
The vaccines provide long-term protection against severe covid and therefore hospitalization or death. “Our findings do show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from becoming infected with the delta variant and spreading it in domestic settings,” she said in a statement. The Lancet.
“The continued transmission we see between vaccinated people makes it essential for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated to protect themselves from infection and severe Covid-19, especially as more people will spend time indoors during the winter months. .”
In addition, the researchers found that susceptibility to infections increased as early as a few months after the second vaccine dose. According to Lalvani, this calls for a quick third shot for people with a weakened immune system. Now AstraZeneca, the ‘British’ vaccine, suffers more from declining protection against infection than Pfizer. AstraZeneca protects approximately 61 percent after three months, Pfizer 78 percent. It is not yet known who and when the Netherlands will make the third jab. The Health Council has been asked to issue an advisory report on 2 November.
One of the study’s lead authors, Anika Singanayagam, said in The Lancet that the findings provide important insights into the effect of vaccination, “and in particular why the delta variant continues to cause high numbers of Covid-19 cases worldwide, even in countries with a high vaccination rate. Ongoing public health and social measures to curb transmission – such as wearing masks, social distancing and testing – thus remain important, even among vaccinated individuals.”
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