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75% of Singapore’s recent COVID-19 cases reported in vaccinated people

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According to government data, three-quarters of Singapore’s COVID-19 infections in the last four weeks occurred among vaccinated individuals, as the city state’s vaccination programme ramps up quickly, leaving fewer people unvaccinated.

According to a Reuters tracker, Singapore has already vaccinated nearly 75% of its 5.7 million people, the world’s second highest after the United Arab Emirates, and half of its population is fully vaccinated.

It reported 1,096 locally transmitted cases in the last 28 days, with 484, or 44 percent, being fully vaccinated, 30 percent being partially vaccinated, and the remaining 25 percent being unvaccinated.

According to the health ministry, there were only seven severe cases that required oxygen support, with six of them being unvaccinated and one being partially vaccinated.

“There is continuing evidence that vaccination helps to prevent serious disease when one gets infected, “According to the ministry, all fully vaccinated and infected people showed no or mild symptoms.

According to experts, infections reported by vaccinated people do not imply that vaccines are ineffective.

“As more and more people are vaccinated in Singapore, we will see more infections happening amongst vaccinated people,” Teo Yik Ying, dean of the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (NUS).

“It is important to always compare it against the proportion of people who remain unvaccinated…. Suppose Singapore achieves a rate of 100% fully vaccinated… then all infections will stem from the vaccinated people and none from the unvaccinated.”

The data also revealed that infections in the previous 14 days among vaccinated people over the age of 61 were around 88 percent, which was higher than the younger age group.

According to Linfa Wang, a professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, elderly people have weaker immune responses to vaccination.

According to the health authorities in Israel, which also has a high vaccination rate, approximately half of the 46 patients hospitalised in severe condition as of early July were vaccinated, and the majority were from risk groups.

It was unclear whether the findings reflected reduced vaccine protection against the more contagious Delta variant, which has been the most common version of the virus in Singapore in recent months.

Singapore’s national vaccination programme relies on Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines and Moderna.

On Thursday, it recorded 162 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, which was close to an 11-month high earlier this week. The increase in cases prompted authorities to tighten restrictions on social gatherings as they work to increase vaccination rates, particularly among the elderly.

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Polina Tikhonova

Polina Tikhonova from Kyiv is Insider Paper’s Editor/Writer. Besides editing pieces, Polina covers articles with a focus on World affairs and politics at Insider Paper. Polina holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. Her articles and news reports have been published by many newspapers, magazines, journals, blogs, and online media sources across the globe. Polina is fluent in English, German, Ukrainian, and Russian.