Can vaccinated people still transmit the covid infection

Covid vaccine and transmission rate: Learn more

Thursday, 3rd June 2021

Vaccination, doctors believe, can lessen the risks associated with Covid-19, and thus, they have always been stressing about getting vaccinated against the virus especially in these bad times when we are all anxious about the potential and the incoming 3rd wave of the infection. Vaccination against Covid-19 can also prove to be beneficial in bringing down the severity as well as mortality risks linked with the disease. Elsewhere, covid-19 vaccination has been taken as a pass or permission for the people to restart their normal life free of masks and roam freely free of the fear of getting infected.

But, the question still remains ‘Does vaccination lower the transmission rate’.  Can someone who is vaccinated still infect the non-vaccinated lots?

Scientifically, all the approved COVID-19 vaccines currently have been thoroughly studied and have been found to carry impressive odds of security, meaning that they may make the body’s immunity power strong enough against the deadly coronavirus, and lower the complexities and complications, including infection-induced hospitalization.

Following similar kinds of principles, covid-19 vaccines should also, similarly, work in lowering the transmission rates- the way in which the covid-19 infection gets transmitted from one individual to another. However, there’s very little proven proof to back this claim yet.

Also Read: New covid vaccine guidelines for patients who have recovered from the infection.

Even for the little proofs that experts have that covid vaccines may lower transmission rates to a certain extent (and not completely), much depends on how effectively the covid vaccine functions in blocking the deadly viral infection.

Different covid vaccines work in different manners. Some, for instance, have been found to reduce moderate to pretty severe covid infections while some vaccines, work by blocking the infections completely. Thus, whether a vaccinated person could spread the infections to others or not depend much on the kind of vaccine you are taking and how it’s working.

Having said that, some medical experts also think that transmission of covid post-vaccination is also dependant on asymptomatic transmission- which many of the covid vaccines haven’t yet factored in

With regard to how SARS-COV-2 Virus gets transmitted, the transmission through asymptomatic people makes the matter far trickier. Not only it’s a novel virus, but it also poses certain challenges as the transmission of infection may spread through both symptomatic as well as asymptomatic carriers. Therefore a person who is infected but comes without any symptom or does not undergo testing may be infecting others. This scenario is applicable to the vaccinated beneficiaries too.

Research conducted across the previous year has revealed the fact that the maximum of the COVID infections was the outcome of the contact of apparently healthy, undiagnosed, and asymptomatic people with the non-infected ones.

The case may be the same with certain vaccinated beneficiaries who may get infected with covid and may have no symptoms at all and yet transmit the infection to others without their knowledge.

Poor tracking of contacts, dearth of awareness may also make matters all the more difficult.

Coronavirus’s 2nd wave in many of the countries across the globe has been triggered by an increasing surge of the strains of concern, which are both highly infectious as well as antibody-surpassing in nature.

The News Talkie Bureau

Source:

TimesofIndia Indiatimes