QCOSTARICA – Getting vaccinated against Covid-19 with the two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca would avoid people being hospitalized in more than 92% of the cases in which the virus is contracted, according to the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS).
The data becomes relevant at a time when the Delta variant of Coronavirus, which is twice as contagious and deadly, has been detected in Costa Rica.
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In this sense, health authorities called on people not to miss the opportunity to get vaccinated.
At this time, according to data from the Caja, Costa Rica registers 28% of the eligible population vaccinated and projects reaching 70% of the desired immunization in 135 days.
This would imply that by the end of the year, the country would return to a semi-normality, since when this percentage is achieved, we have herd immunity, which is when the population becomes immune to the disease due to previous contagion, or because it has been vaccinated and the epidemiological chain between its individuals is interrupted.
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Against this background, the acceleration of the vaccination campaign and access to doses become essential, but how effective are the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines applied in Costa Rica against the Delta variant? And what about people who were vaccinated outside the country with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine?
Read more: 250,000 more Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines arrive tonight
Guiselle Guzmán, an epidemiologist at the CCSS, explained that the effectiveness to avoid hospitalizations related to Covid-19, especially to the Delta variant, is 96% for people who were vaccinated with Pfizer, and 92% for those who received both doses of AstraZeneca.
Likewise, she stressed that the J & J vaccine avoids by 85% the need to require urgent medical attention when contracting this variant.
“With only that I have a 60% less chance of getting seriously ill, or dying, that should already be considered as important to get the vaccine,” she added Guzmán.
It should be noted that the optimal effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine, in this case, is two weeks after receiving the second dose. However, with just one dose, the vaccine is 33% effective, three weeks after immunization.
After the announcement of the circulation of the Delta variant in our country, Christian Pérez, a microbiologist at the National Children’s Hospital, considers it essential to maintain genomic surveillance of the virus, in an accelerated manner.
“It is a delicate, tedious and expensive technique, but we are faced with the need to sequence, to know how the virus is changing in our country and to be able to take concrete actions,” added Pérez.
Being vaccinated reduces the risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 and even being hospitalized when both doses have been received.
According to the CCSS, the goal is to vaccinate 4,274,344 people – 83% of the Total population -12 years of age and older.
To July 19, 2021, the Caja reports applying 2,812,795 doses, of which 1,982,452 people with the first dose and 830,343 people with both doses.
A new update usually is provided by Tuesday of the week, but given that Monday was a holiday, a new update may not be available until Wednesday.
