The Minister of Health made an extremely important announcement at the last minute for millions of Romanians, and this is because he is talking to everyone about the decision taken by one of the Pfizer directors to officially talk about the ability of vaccines to stop the transmission of the Coronavirus, it not being total.
The Minister of Health says that it is normal for vaccines not to completely stop transmission, as is the case with the flu vaccine, because this is impossible, but it is important that vaccines prevent serious forms of illness, if not much time has passed since to effective immunization.
"Always when a vaccine is authorized, a technical file for authorization is submitted to the competent authority. In the USA it is the FDA, in Europe it is the EMA. These data are data related to the clinical studies that were done, they address at least three aspects. The first, and the most important, is related to the safety of the vaccine, that is, if you administer the vaccine, there are no serious or frequent reactions that could endanger the lives of vaccinated people.
The second thing is effectiveness, it refers to two elements: the vaccine prevents the disease, that is, it stops transmission, and the second element is related to the fact that serious forms of the disease are prevented, and this reduces mortality, or complicated forms of the disease . From what I know, and from what I said in the first part of the pandemic based on the information I had, it was that the vaccine had an effectiveness of 94% in the case of the one from Pfizer.
For Moderna, the effectiveness was 95%, these being the vaccines based on recombinant RNA technology. The other vaccines, which used viral vectors, AstraZeneca, or Johnson, had an effectiveness between 75% and 82%. Effectiveness means stopping transmission in most cases, not all, and the flu vaccine we make every year has an effectiveness of around 65%, 70%, 75%, depending on the circulating strains.
It does not prevent all diseases, but it prevents most cases of transmissibility in vaccinated people. Now I have no way to comment on this statement, I am saying what I knew at the time, but obviously things have evolved. Now, regarding the prevention of transmission, there are no longer any significant differences between vaccinated and non-vaccinated people.
You have seen that there are people who have had 3 doses of the vaccine, and it can happen that people get sick, but it is important not to get 3 forms of the disease. The important thing is, when you talk about an epidemic or a pandemic, the most important thing, if you want to stop this phenomenon, is to stop the transmission."
