Trust the Vaccines

Based on data from United Kingdom, the COVID-19 vaccines are effective.

Dr Saiful Safuan Md Sani https://saifulsafuan.com (Advanced Acute Internal Medicine Society Malaysia & Department of Medicine Hospital Kuala Lumpur)https://aaims.co
2021-07-23

Table of Contents


Do the vaccines work? UK’s population received the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. Have they shown any significant effectiveness before reaching the herd immunity level of 80%?

At Least One Dose

On June 11, 2021, UK surpassed 60% of its population vaccinated with at least one dose of a vaccine.

Figure 1: Click on the chart to engage its interactive mode. Hover cursor along the scatterplot below to search for the date.

Full vaccination

Also, on June 11, 2021, 40% of the UK’s population have been fully vaccinated.

Figure 2: Click on the chart to engage its interactive mode. Hover cursor along the scatterplot below to search for the date.

New cases

First lockdown was July 4 - August 3, 2020, second lockdown was December 2-15, 2020, and third lockdown was January 6 - March 8, 2021. As the third lockdown restrictions have been eased over 4 stages, new cases rise again despite the vaccinated proportions achieved.

Figure 3: Click on the chart to engage its interactive mode. Hover cursor along the scatterplot below to search for the date.

Hospitalisations : Cases Ratio

However, since early July 2021, hospitalisations have gone down towards very low levels, circa 8% of cases.

Figure 4: Click on the chart to engage its interactive mode. Hover cursor along the scatterplot below to search for the date.

Deaths : Cases Ratio

Most importantly, on July 17, 2021, the case fatality rate has also gone down to 0.09%.

Figure 5: Click on the chart to engage its interactive mode. Hover cursor along the scatterplot below to search for the date.

The Delta

Cases of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK rose by 54,268 on the previous week to a total of 216,249, new data showed.

Conclusion

The vaccines have effectively reduced two crucial clinical parameters: deaths and hospitalisations due to COVID-19, even amidst the high and rising proportion of the circulating Delta variant. This effectiveness occurs early at 60% of the population having received at least one dose and 40% fully vaccinated.


Source of data:
Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Diana Beltekian, Edouard Mathieu, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Charlie Giattino, Cameron Appel, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Max Roser (2020) - “Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus’ [Online Resource]
References
Definition of waves of COVID-19 by the Office of National Statistics