While India is struggling to vaccinate its population, Seychelles has vaccinated a higher proportion of its population against COVID-19 than any other country. But despite vaccinating 37 percent of its population of 100,000 with both the doses of the vaccines, Seychelles has been witnessing a renewed surge in the COVID-19 cases.
According to the Health Ministry of the archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, the number of active cases had more than doubled since last week to 2,486 people. Looking at the continuous rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, the government of Seychelles is forced to reinstitute lockdown measures again.
Although, the number of infections is low, but is a big cause for concern for the tiny geographically isolated nation with a population of just 100,000. If looked carefully, the daily case rate is a higher number of infections per capita than India’s outbreak.
With the surge in COVID cases in the archipelago, concerns are being raised about the efficacy of the vaccines and questions are being raised on whether inoculation is being able to help reduce the coronavirus cases or not.
To this, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that vaccine failure couldn’t be determined without a detailed assessment and also that the organisation is working on evaluating the situation.
Apart from this, the Director of the WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, Kate O’Brien said, “The body is in direct communication with Seychelles and a detailed assessment is needed in order to find out the reasons behind the increase in the number of COVID related cases. Also, factors like strains of the virus and the severity of cases need to be carefully put in the evaluation.”
In Seychelles, Sinopharm shots were issued to 57 percent of those who were fully inoculated and the rest with Covishield, a vaccine made in India under a license from AstraZeneca.