Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The Sinovac vaccine is the most widely circulated vaccine in Indonesia. However, recent research suggests that people who took Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine were nearly five times more likely to experience severe symptoms of Covid-19 than those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty vaccine. This was revealed in a recent study conducted in Singapore.
A team of infectious disease experts from the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and the Singapore Ministry of Health (MOH), observed the relatively lower effectiveness of two inactivated whole virus vaccines (Sinovac and Sinopharm), against Covid-19 infection compared to with mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna).
As a result, those who concluded the Sinovac vaccine were 4.59 times more likely to develop symptoms of severe Covid-19 infection compared to those who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They were also 2.37 times more likely to be infected, compared to those who used the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
“Individuals vaccinated with two doses of the inactivated whole virus vaccine were observed to have lower protection against Covid-19 infection compared to those vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine,” said the study, published on Tuesday (12/4/2022), quoted from Channel News Asia, Thursday (14/4/2022).
“Nevertheless, both mRNA vaccines and inactivated whole virus vaccines provide adequate protection against severe symptoms of Covid-19 and vaccination remains the main strategy against the pandemic.”
Meanwhile, severe symptoms in the study were defined as those requiring oxygen supplementation in hospital, admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), or death.
The findings also showed that the Moderna vaccine was more effective in preventing severe symptoms compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Those taking Moderna were found to be less than half (0.42) times more likely to develop severe Covid-19 than Pfizer-BioNTech recipients, and they were also less likely to become infected.
Citing a report from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC), the higher effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine is likely due to the higher mRNA content in Moderna’s vaccine and the longer time interval between injections.
The study involved approximately 2.7 million people in Singapore aged 20 years and over who received two doses under the national vaccination programme. The data is taken for a seven-week period in 2021 from October 1 to November 21, when cases in Singapore spiked due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
(Teti Purwanti/dem)
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