Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

There is still no sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence to show that mR­NA vac­cines are more ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing COVID-19 deaths than those with in­ac­ti­vat­ed vac­cines such as Sinopharm.

This is the view of Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh when asked if he was con­cerned about a Sin­ga­pore re­port which breaks down COVID deaths by vac­cine.

The re­port sug­gest­ed that most of the deaths re­port­ed in Sin­ga­pore were peo­ple who got Sino­vac or Sinopharm shots while on­ly a few deaths were those who were ad­min­is­tered a Mod­er­na vac­cine.

Sin­ga­pore has a high in­oc­u­la­tion rate. Of the 802 peo­ple who suc­cumbed to COVID-19 last year in the city state, 70 per cent were not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

At the min­istry’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh quot­ed Sin­ga­pore’s Health Min­is­ter, Ong Ye Kung, who, in re­sponse to the re­port said, the sam­ple size was small and did not ac­count for fac­tors like age and tim­ing of vac­cine dos­es.

“I just want to urge us that when we are read­ing re­ports, not to cher­ry pick any­thing to fit a nar­ra­tive. Look at the en­tire re­port and let us make rea­son­able con­clu­sions and not as­sump­tions,” Deyals­ingh urged.

How­ev­er, epi­demi­ol­o­gist, Dr Av­ery Hinds, said any ar­gu­ment about the ef­fec­tive­ness of COVID-19 vac­cines will be ruled out by the cur­rent vac­cine boost­er pro­gramme.

“Once you reach full vac­ci­na­tion, whether it’s with an mR­NA or the killed virus, whichev­er vac­cine is avail­able and is giv­en to you, your im­mune sys­tem will be boost­ed by con­tin­u­ing with the boost­er sched­ule,” Hinds af­firmed.

“There­fore, the con­cern that may arise from whether one or the oth­er gives you longer pro­tec­tion, is mit­i­gat­ed by the fact that there is a boost­er pro­gramme,” he added.

Mean­while, Hinds said health of­fi­cials are will­ing to con­sid­er re­duc­ing the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od for in­fect­ed peo­ple and their con­tacts on­ly if glob­al ev­i­dence sug­gests that it is safe to do so with­out in­creas­ing the risk of trans­mis­sion.

The cur­rent pol­i­cy re­quires some­one, who has test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, to re­main in quar­an­tine for 21 days while any­one ex­posed to an in­fect­ed per­son to iso­late for 14 days.

“The iso­la­tion pe­ri­od for those in­fect­ed has been set at 21 days re­al­ly to min­i­mize the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some­one be­ing in­fec­tious, mean­ing shed­ding virus by be­ing out and about and con­tribut­ing to the spread of the virus while they are ill or even if they don’t feel ill,” Hinds ex­plained.

“Peo­ple may test neg­a­tive pri­or to that but as the WHO it­self has ac­tu­al­ly point­ed out, the best use of the test­ing re­source at this point in time is not util­is­ing for out test­ing to re­lease in­di­vid­u­als from iso­la­tion so what you do is cre­ate a sys­tem that may err on the side of cau­tion but re­duces the risk of in­fec­tious peo­ple mov­ing around,” he added.

Hinds re­mind­ed that a per­son can be­gin ex­hibit­ing symp­toms as much as 14 days af­ter ex­po­sure.

“They are not un­nec­es­sary and just be­cause some­one feels in­con­ve­nienced by them does not mean it is in­valid,” he said.