Ministry: Only 3.8% of COVID fatalities fully vaccinated

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Rishard Khan

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The Ministry of Health has revealed that only 3.8 per cent of COVID-19 fatalities recorded since inoculations began were fully vaccinated.

However, for 26-year-old Andrea Rampersad, it’s hard to believe her father was among the unlucky few to succumb to the disease despite being fully vaccinated.

According to Rampersad, her 59-year-old father, Telak received his second dose of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine in July but succumbed to the disease months later on November 12.

“How we feel? We don’t know how to express our feelings based on this untimely passing of my dad. It’s shocking, it’s disbelief, we can’t seem to accept that death as yet because he was fully vaccinated,” she told Guardian Media.

She said her father tested positive for COVID-19 on November 1 and began showing signs of “deterioration of his health.”

She said they sought advice from the family’s doctor. She said the doctor prescribed medication as well as vitamins but symptoms persisted.

She said they got a pulse-oximeter for him three days after he tested positive when his symptoms worsened.

“When I used the oximeter, the oximeter registered at 60 so we had to call the ambulance immediately. The ambulance took about two hours before arriving here and by the time they arrived here and they measured his oxygen level it was 55,” she said.

A reading below 90 is considered a low blood oxygen level for an adult. Normal blood oxygen level is between 95 to 100.

Just over a week later the family received the call that he had passed away after “multi-organ failure” from COVID-19.

She said as far as the family knew, he had no underlying health conditions. Rampersad said she and both her parents were fully inoculated with the same vaccine. Adding to their bewilderment with the situation, she said her mother also tested positive with her father.

“But her symptoms were nowhere close to what he had. She just had a mild cough and a runny nose,” Rampersad said.

The Ministry of Health’s epidemiology division’s technical director Dr Avery Hinds said yesterday that 56 fully vaccinated people succumbed to COVID-19 out of over 1,400 fatalities tracked.

“Among the 1,437 fatalities that have occurred since we began to count fatalities among vaccinated vs unvaccinated individuals, what we have noted is that 56 of those which is about 3.8 per cent would have been individuals who had two doses of a vaccine on board, more than two weeks after their vaccination regimen had been completed,” he said.

“So that’s 3.8 per cent, let’s say 4 per cent at most. So 96 per cent of the fatalities that have continued to occur continue to be among the unvaccinated.”

He said further analysis of the data also showed that the majority of the rare fully vaccinated COVID-19 deaths had pre-existing comorbid conditions.

While he appealed for everyone to get vaccinated, he also urged people with COVID-19 to seek medical attention sooner.

“We want to encourage persons that when there is need to step up your care that you do it as early as possible as opposed to waiting until there is very little that can be done,” Hinds said.

Since losing her father, Rampersad took to social media to highlight the family’s experience. Following this, a number of people have used the situation as justification to discourage vaccination, despite the rarity of the occurrence. Rampersad, however, did not want to dissuade people from taking the jab.

“I don’t want to tell people yes you should take the vaccine or no you shouldn’t. That’s a personal choice and I would leave that up to the individuals themselves to make that decision,” she said.

While she noted there is some scepticism surrounding the vaccine, especially since her family’s encounter, she does not think her father would abstain from taking a jab if he knew this would have been his fate.

“I think he would still take that vaccine. He would have still been open to taking that vaccine because he was at risk because of his job being a courier. Being a courier he would have been exposed and I think he would have still taken it hoping that it would have provided him protection as well as the family,” she said.