Covid-19 rages in the world’s most vaccinated country

The country of Seychelles has recently witnessed a sharp uptick in Covid-19 cases despite running a largely successful vaccination campaign

The tiny island of Seychelles has piqued the interest of health experts studying the effectiveness of certain vaccines against the coronavirus pandemic. The tourism-reliant nation has seen an unprecedented explosion of Covid-19 cases despite being the world’s most vaccinated country.

Seychelles has taken the lead in the sprint towards the elusive idea of “herd immunity”, having vaccinated upwards of 60 per cent of a population of less than 1 lakh people. In percentage terms, this is greater than any other country in the world and almost double the United States’s vaccination rate.

On the flip side, Seychelles is currently clocking its biggest swell in Covid-19 cases per capita, forcing the country to bring back a number of restrictions including school closures and limited opening hours for shops and restaurants, to contain the spread. On a per capita basis, the island nation’s outbreak is even worse than India’s devastating second wave.

Some blame the vaccines that Seychelles picked for its vaccination drive for the unexpected surge in Covid-19 cases. Close to 60 per cent of the doses in Seychelles were made by the Chinese company Sinopharm, donated to Seychelles by the United Arab Emirates. The remaining doses are of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and produced by the Serum Institute of India, according to a report by The Washington Post.

Both these vaccines have been found to have an effectiveness of just a shade under 80 per cent, which is markedly lower than the mRNA-based vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, which have reported effectiveness rates of around 95 per cent.

Based on the real-world data collected about the vaccines and Seychelles’ vaccine programme, some health experts say that the country may be far less protected from the pandemic than appears on paper.

“Less than half of the population is protected by the vaccine,” epidemiologist Jennifer Huang Bouey told the publication. “It is still far below the community-level protection requirement.”

Officials in the government have hinted that the outbreak was more likely because pockets of the population still haven’t received the vaccine. Out of 1,068 active cases, around 65 per cent of residents were either completely unvaccinated or had received only one dose, according to government data.

While the number of deaths in Seychelles due to the virus remains relatively low at 28 out of more than 6,000 cases, the exponential growth in new cases has raised many questions surrounding the effectiveness of some Covid-19 vaccines and vaccination programmes when implemented on the ground.