After the second dose of the covid-19 vaccine was administered, 4,030 people out of 3.86 million vaccinated became infected, most of whom tested positive shortly after the vaccine was administered. Health Minister Adam Vojtěch (ANO) said this today after a meeting with the Czech Medical Chamber, Milan Kubek.
“It’s clear that no vaccine in the world protects 100 percent. We can’t expect that no one will get infected at all, ” the minister said. Vaccination eliminates severe cases, and people won’t end up in hospitals. He underlined that one-hundredth of one percent of those vaccinated have a mild course of the disease, and even fewer have a severe approach.
After the first dose, 1.6 percent of those vaccinated, about 22,600 people, became infected. “We see in the data that a large proportion of the infections detected after vaccination broke out very soon. That is, in a window of time when the vaccinated person could not yet be protected, ” said Ladislav Dušek, director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (IHIS).
According to Vojtěch, young and healthy people should also be vaccinated, as they may not risk contracting the disease. “If they become infected, they may go on to infect someone who is at risk. Maybe someone who can not even get vaccinated for health reasons, ” he said, adding that this is why collective immunity needs to be created.
In the new delta variant, collective immunity is expected to emerge only when about 85 percent of the population is vaccinated. Kubek said unvaccinated people behave like stowaways. “They would like to benefit from collective immunity, but they don’t want to contribute to it. We have to try to convince those people to buy their tickets and contribute to others as well, ” he stated.
According to Kubek, 83 percent of doctors have been vaccinated, 75 percent of nurses, and roughly 70 percent of other medical staff. “The unvaccinated doctors are not in the vast majority of refusers. Often they are people who have had covid, had their antibodies boosted, and don’t want to be vaccinated yet, ” he mentioned.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has also published data on repeat infections. So far, it has recorded 2,026 out of a total of 1.6 million positive tests, with only a slight increase recently due to the small number of new cases in general. The NIH registers a repeat infection if more than 60 days have passed since the first one. The median interval so far is 132 days.