A military health worker shows a Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine during the vaccination of military personnel at the army headquarters in Manila on March 2, 2021. (TED ALJIBE / AFP)

Vaccines may not be totally fail-safe in the fight against COVID-19 infections, but the public is still advised to get the jabs to develop immunity against the novel coronavirus, a senior Philippine health official said.

Mary Jean P. Loreche, chief pathologist and a regional COVID-19 spokesperson for Philippines’ health department, made the remarks following reports that two overseas Filipino workers who had been inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines abroad later tested positive for the virus while in the Philippines.

Media reports said that a Filipino male worker from UAE and a female worker from Canada tested positive for the virus even after getting their vaccine shots

Media reports said that a Filipino male worker from UAE and a female worker from Canada tested positive for the virus even after getting their vaccine shots. The male worker from UAE was said to have received Sinopharm’s anti-coronavirus vaccine.

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The UAE worker had two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine on Dec 12, followed by a second dose on Jan 2. He returned to the Philippines on Jan 5, was quarantined for 14 days, and discharged. He was asymptomatic throughout.

The female worker from Canada, 25, had her first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine on Jan 13 and returned to the Philippines on Feb 9. She tested positive while still in quarantine.

Loreche said a possible reason for the positive test results was that the immunity that the vaccines were supposed to have conferred to the two patients had “not kicked (in) yet” when they were infected. 

She added that those two overseas workers also “may already have had the coronavirus prior to the vaccination”.

Concerns about vaccine safety are not only confined to the Philippines.

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In Singapore, Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary said on Feb 1 that there were four reported cases of anaphylaxis in people who received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report filed by Channel News Asia.

Rowena Cristina Guevara, undersecretary for research and development at the Philippines’ Department of Science and Technology, said no vaccine can be deemed 100 percent effective.

“There is still always a risk that a person might catch the virus. Hence, minimum health safety precautions such as social distancing, wearing face masks and washing hands frequently should still be practiced,” she said.

Guevara assured members of the public that they cannot get COVID-19 from a vaccine, pointing out that the jab does not contain the live virus.

“Vaccines make use of killed or inactivated virus or specific portions of the virus to elicit an immune response,” she said.

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And such seems to be the case with the United Arab Emirates, which has reported a gradual decrease in COVID-19 cases, according to the Emirates’ Ministry of Health and Prevention.

The UAE has the second highest immunization rate after Israel. As of March 1, a total of 6,028,417 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been provided in the UAE, with the distribution rate standing at 60.95 doses per 100 people.

UAE health officials noted a “significant decrease” in the rate of hospital admissions since the Persian Gulf nation began a mass vaccination campaign, Abu Dhabi-based English language daily The National reported. Pregnant women and children were excluded from the vaccination program.

Quoting senior health authorities, the newspaper suggested that the duration of immunity offered by two doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine “is likely to last six months or less”, but added that more data was needed to reach any definite conclusions.

Medical experts are said to be testing how effective the jabs from Sinopharm, as well as other vaccine candidates, will be against new strains of the virus.

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On Feb 23, UAE’s National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority, or NCEMA, tweeted that when the majority of the population become immune to an infectious disease, there is indirect protection for others in the community due to the limited spread of the disease.

“Community immunity is part of the indirect protection phases from an infectious disease and it occurs when a large proportion of the society acquires immunity to a specific infection…,” the NCEMA said.

The UAE in December became the first government to approve the use of the Sinopharm vaccine.

Nawal Al-Kaabi, principal investigator for the Emirates’ Phase III clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines, earlier told China Daily that the Sinopharm vaccine has established a robust safety profile throughout the large-scale global trials and widespread emergency use programs.

“The Sinopharm vaccine is the world’s first inactivated vaccine against COVID-19, which essentially means that manufacturing this vaccine will be easier than other counterparts, given the robustness and time-tested methodologies,” said Al-Kaabi, who also chairs the UAE’s National COVID-19 Clinical Management Committee.

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Al-Kaabi noted that inactivated vaccines have been used historically for more than 50 years to prevent infectious diseases, such as hepatitis A, polio, flu, and rabies.

“These traditional vaccines are unquestionably safe compared to other vaccines using new platforms,” said Al-Kaabi.

Apart from Sinopharm, Sputnik V, Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs are currently being administered in the UAE in the fight against COVID-19.

Micheal Felfernig, medical director at Abu Dhabi-based healthcare solutions provider Response Plus Medical, said medicines have shown major benefits in treating COVID-19 patients, especially when it comes to life-saving treatments in intensive care units.

He said strategies have changed and have tremendously contributed to a better survival rate than that recorded during the first acute outbreak.

“People need to understand that vaccination does not only protect them but also their loved ones,” said Felfernig.

“Let’s hope for the best which means no mutations come up and the science is finally producing a global influenza/corona vaccine or even better medication.”

Contact the writers at jan@chinadailyapac.com