Prime Minister Imran Khan tested positive just two days after receiving the first dose of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine once again raised a barrage of questions about the protection of the vaccine, which could also be used as food by many who doubt the vaccine in the parents.
Here, we’ll see what science and experts tell us about the time it takes for vaccine protection to take effect and the extent to which vaccines provide protection against the virus.
Dr. Javed Akram, a member of the federal government’s Covid-19 Scientific Task Force and Vice Chancellor University of Health Sciences, taking Dawn.com, said it is not uncommon for people to become infected soon after vaccination.
“The fact is that antibodies start to develop five to seven days after the first injection of the vaccine. After two weeks, the antibodies reach protective levels, but it takes 28 days to reach [their] optimal level.
“Despite this, it cannot be said that a person is fully protected from the virus, as no vaccine is 100 percent effective. Effective rate of about 80pc [for Sinopharm] it means that a person, despite having been fully vaccinated, can be infected with the virus, but will develop small symptoms and there will be less chance of death. ”
Experts from the United Arab Emirates, where Sinopharm is among the main vaccines used, corroborate Dr. Akram’s position.
“For vaccines to boost immunity, it takes a few weeks after the second dose,” said Dr. Muhammed Shafeeq, Pulmonology Specialist at Aster Hospital, Al Qusais. Khaleej Times.
Dr. Anthony Thomas, Director of the Diagnostic and Pathologist Division at Prime Healthcare Group, also noted that “the effectiveness of the [Sinopharm] the vaccine ranges from 75 to 85 percent ”and therefore immunity is not guaranteed for everyone.
This means that even after two weeks of total vaccination, there is little chance of getting the virus, as no vaccine is 100pc effective. For Sinopharm, which has an average effectiveness close to 80pc, this means that there are chances that one in five people is not yet protected.
For other vaccines, such as Moderna and Pfizer, which have higher efficiencies of about 95pc, one in 20 people will still remain unprotected.
Can inactivated vaccines cause the virus?
Do not.
Dr. Akram also confirmed that vaccines cannot infect people with Covid-19, adding that “inactivated vaccines have no potential for transmission”.
He said the PM Imran positive test had no connection to the vaccine he received 48 hours ago.
“I believe that the premier was already infected with the virus, but the symptoms could not be developed, as the incubation period for the virus is 7 to 10 days. It will be almost impossible to test and track who has been infected, as the virus’s positive rate has reached about 10 percent in Pakistan and more than 3,000 people are being infected daily, ”he said.
Sinopharm and several other Chinese jabs are called inactivated vaccines, which means that they use a variant of the coronavirus to help the body learn how to fight the real virus. But, once these coronaviruses are “inactivated”, they can no longer replicate.
Inactivated viruses have been used to successfully create vaccines for more than a century, and some examples include vaccines for poliovirus, rabies and hepatitis A.
“Inactivated vaccines have no potential for transmission. While we were testing the Cansino Bio, at UHS Lahore, up to 112 volunteers developed Covid-19, but that does not mean that they were infected due to the vaccine.
“All of them were already infected, which is why we decided that during a new trial, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests will be performed,” Dr. Akram, who supervised Cansino’s clinical trial at UHS and is the principal investigator national clinical trials of another Chinese vaccine, he said.
Global experts weigh
Experts around the world agree that the human body needs “two to three weeks” to build an immune response, once the vaccine is administered – regardless of which vaccine was taken.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading expert in the United States, said that partial immunity is achieved about two weeks after the first injection of two-dose vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna.
He said that once the second injection is given, about two weeks later, there is “a tenfold increase in neutralizing antibodies”.
The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also corroborate this and state the following on their website as to when people are considered “fully vaccinated”:
“People are considered to be fully vaccinated two weeks after the second dose in a series of 2 doses, like the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.”
The CDC also notes that, since it takes a few weeks for immunity to grow, it is possible to be infected with Covid-19 a few days before or after receiving the first vaccine injection. “This is because the vaccine did not have enough time to provide protection.”