Expert Ensures Vaccination Still Effective Despite Decreasing Efficacy Rate

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (FKUI), Tjandra Yoga Aditama ensured that the Covid-19 vaccination is still effective although the vaccine efficacy rate is now decreasing due to mutations or new variants of the coronavirus.

"Although the vaccine efficacy has decreased, it can still be used to treat existing variants, especially preventing serious illness and death," said Tjandra Yoga in an Expert Lecture entitled "The Role of Biomedical in the Era and Post Pandemic" held by YARSI University, Wednesday, September 15. 2021.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for example, according to an analysis by Public Health England is 80 percent effective at preventing infection from the Delta variant of Covid-19. These results were obtained after the researchers analyzed 14,019 patients and 166 of them underwent treatment in hospitals in the UK. Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective in preventing patients with the Delta variant of Covid-19 from being hospitalized.

A small laboratory study in New York also showed mRNA-based vaccines, namely Pfizer and Moderna, were about 94-95 percent effective at preventing the Delta variant of Covid-19. The Pfizer vaccine is known to have an efficacy of 95 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections.

As for the Sinovac vaccine, according to a study by the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China, two injections of the vaccine provided 59 percent efficacy against the Delta variant. The efficacy for Covid-19 infection in the moderate category is 70.2 percent. The study involved 628 patients, including 153 people who had confirmed the Delta variant of COVID-19.

Tjandra Yoga Aditama, who once served as Director of WHO Southeast Asia, explained that if vaccine efficacy decreases, the next step is to modify the vaccine, not create a new vaccine. "Currently, the level of vaccine efficacy has not decreased significantly," he said. "Don't then think that if the efficacy level drops again, you have to make a new Covid-19 vaccine. Just modify it within six to eight weeks."

Read: 5 Provinces Log Vaccination Coverage Below National Target: Health Ministry

Rini Kustiani | Maudey K. Setyakusuma (Internship)