Disastrous to think vaccines do not work and reject them: Wong

People should not overreact to cases of vaccinated individuals getting infected with Covid-19, and make the "biggest mistake" of thinking there is no need for vaccinations as they do not work, said Education Minister Lawrence Wong yesterday.

"That would be disastrous because the vaccinations do work," he stressed, noting that they protect people from the risk of severe disease and help reduce transmission of the coronavirus.

While vaccines are not foolproof, they will have a bigger impact on reducing the overall virus spread in the community when more people are vaccinated, he said, urging every person who is medically eligible to get inoculated.

Mr Wong's remarks at a press conference came after it emerged that four of the five Covid-19 cases who are medical staff working at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The five staff are two doctors, a nurse, one healthcare assistant and one cleaner who had worked in the ward where this cluster of cases had emerged.

Of the eight hospital patients in the 13-person cluster, one person received both doses of the vaccine, while another received one dose. Seven of the eight patients were admitted to Ward 9D, while one was admitted to Ward 9C.

The Health Ministry's director of medical services Kenneth Mak said people who have been vaccinated have derived some level of immunity.

"As illustrated by this cluster, vaccination doesn't provide 100 per cent protection, but it increases your resistance to getting symptomatic infection, it reduces the risk of you getting an infection and spreading that," he added.

The vaccinations remain protective for the wide majority of the population who have received them, Associate Professor Mak said.

Investigations are ongoing to ensure that the vaccinated individuals in the TTSH cluster were properly vaccinated, he said.

So far, no issues associated with vaccine quality or the cold chain supply of vaccines at the vaccination centres have been found.

Describing the cases of vaccinated individuals getting Covid-19 as "breakthrough infections", Mr Wong said the fact that this can happen is "something we already knew about".

"So we should not overreact to the news of breakthrough infections, or worse, make the biggest mistake, which is to say that, 'Oh, vaccinations don't work, and therefore, maybe there is no need for a vaccine'," he added.

The National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) is also testing all cases who have been admitted there to determine their Covid-19 status.

These patients may have been admitted and transferred to NCID because of a positive polymerase chain reaction test, which may mean the individual has an active infection or that the person was previously infected and is persistently shedding the virus.

The hospitals are also performing phylogenetic tests to assess whether any of these infections are due to viral variants of concern, Prof Mak said.

The genome of the virus is first sequenced before a phylogenetic analysis is done on it, which allows for cases to be linked to clusters and variants of concerns to be identified.

Numerous variants have been detected globally, such as Britain's B117 strain, Brazil's P1 variant, South Africa's B1351 and India's "double-mutant" variant, B1617.