On May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted the global health emergency due to the coronavirus. But COVID-19 it has not disappeared, although the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, is now endemic. New “variants of interest” circulate, such as EG.5, also called Eris, XBB.1.5 and XBB.1.16 (Arcturus).
It is likely that the new vaccines of Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax against covid, which are still awaiting approval in various countries and regions, offer protection against the latter (sub)variants. But the spread of false information about them has already begun. For this reason, at DW we offer a magnifying glass look at the facts.
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Do COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system?
Afirmación: Repeated vaccinations against COVID-19 weaken the immune system and lead to an increased risk of infection, Canadian physician Charles Hoffe said in a facebook video.
DW check: false
The study Hoffe alludes to in his video comes from the University of Cleveland. The study concludes that “among 51,011 Cleveland Clinic employees of working age, the bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine was 30 percent effective in preventing infection.” […]However, the study has significant weaknesses and is still in preprint status, which means it has not yet been reviewed by independent scientific institutions.
So do COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system? “No,” says Kawsar Talaat, an associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.
“Our immune system is used to receiving many different stimuli, whether it be from vaccines or contact with a virus,” he explains. Fortunately, he continues, our immune system does not weaken the more times we are exposed to a pathogen, but on the contrary, it gets stronger.
Talaat emphasizes: “Vaccines protect by improving the immune response, they do not increase the risk of contracting some type of infection.”
But individual factors also play a role: For those who have recently been infected, the infection itself refreshes their immunity. So they can wait longer to apply a booster, Talaat adds. In contrast, older people or people with previous illnesses tend to have a weaker immune system. For them, it is important to keep their immune protection high.
This man received his fourth vaccination in July 2023 in Bangladesh. Image: Md Rafayat Haque Khan/ZUMA Press/picture alliance
Have coronavirus vaccines failed?
Affirmation: Collin Rugg, co-owner of the right-wing news page Trending Politicsstates in a Tweet seen millions of times: “The Biden Administration will recommend to Americans another booster vaccine against COVID-19, despite the fact that neither previous vaccines nor boosters protect people against the virus.”
DW check: false
Experts do not share this generalization. It is true that there have been people infected by the coronavirus even after getting vaccinated, and in rare cases they have even become seriously ill and died. But it’s normal for vaccines not to be 100 percent effective.
Rafael Mikolajczyk, director of the Institute for Medical Epidemiology, Biometrics and Informatics at the University of Halle in Germany, explains that there are other factors that also influence the effectiveness of a vaccine: for example, age and general health, the number of previous vaccinations, the interval between them and the time elapsed since the last vaccination.
Since, according to the data website Our World in Data, 70.5 percent of the world population -that is, some 5.700 million people- have already received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, the absolute numbers of infections in those vaccinated may also seem high. Most importantly, though, vaccines continue to protect against serious illness, hospitalization, and death.
For example, according to a US study published in January 2023, boosters of messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna adapted to the new variants protect by 58.7 and 58.8 percent, respectively, against hospitalization.
Epidemiologist Talaat summarizes the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine as follows: “Actually, the protection against infection is not that good. So you can get COVID, even with a cough, runny nose, fever, pain in the extremities. But it’s highly unlikely that you’ll end up in hospital or even die, especially if you’ve had multiple shots and boosters.”
His assessment is shared by important health organizations and research institutions. The WHO website says: “Since their introduction, COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives around the world.”
(jov/rml)
2023-08-29 17:18:59
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