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JAKARTA (Reuters) – More than 350 doctors and medical staff have contracted COVID-19 in Indonesia despite being vaccinated with Sinovac, and dozens have been hospitalized, officials said, as concerns grow about the effectiveness of some vaccines against more infectious species.
Most of the workers were asymptomatic and self-isolating at home, but dozens were in hospital with high fever and low oxygen saturation levels, said Badai Ismoyo, head of the Kudus district health office in Central Java.
Kudus, which has about 5,000 health care workers, is battling an outbreak believed to be driven by a more transmissible delta variant that has raised household occupancy rates to more than 90%.
Health care workers were designated as a priority group, and were among the first to be vaccinated when vaccination began in January.
The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) says almost all of them have received the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac.
While the number of Indonesian healthcare workers dying of COVID-19 has dropped sharply from 158 in January to 13 in May, according to data initiative group LaporCOVID-19, public health experts say hospitalization in Java is a cause for concern.
“The data shows that they have a delta variant (in kudus), so it is not surprising that the penetration incidence is higher than before, because, as we know, the majority of healthcare workers in Indonesia have had Sinovac, and we still don’t know,” said Dickie Bodeman , an epidemiologist at Australia’s Griffith University, “However effective in the real world against the delta variant.”
Spokespeople from Sinovac and the Indonesian Ministry of Health were not immediately available to comment on the effectiveness of China’s CoronaVac against the new variants of the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) approved the emergency use of the Sinovac vaccine this month, saying results showed it prevented symptomatic illness in 51% of recipients, and prevented severe COVID-19 and hospital stays in all studied. Read more
As Indonesia grapples with one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with more than 1.9 million infections and 53,000 deaths, doctors and nurses have suffered a heavy toll of 946 deaths.
Lenny Ekawati, from LaporCOVID-19, said many are now suffering from pandemic fatigue and are taking a less vigilant approach to post-vaccination health protocols.
“This phenomenon is happening a lot these days, not only within the community, but also within health care workers,” she said. “They think they’re safe because they got vaccinated.”
But as more cases of the highly transmissible delta variant are identified in the world’s fourth most populous country, the data is beginning to tell a different story.
Across Indonesia, at least five doctors and one nurse have died from COVID-19 despite being vaccinated, according to the Data Initiative group, although only one has received the first shot.
In Kudos, a senior physician died, although he is understood to have had a joint disease.
In Jakarta, radiologist Dr. Brigo Sedipratomo told Reuters he knew of at least six doctors who were hospitalized with COVID-19 last month, despite being vaccinated, and one of them is now being treated in the intensive care unit.
“It’s worrying for us because we can’t rely on vaccines alone,” he said, urging people to take precautions.
Weeks into the Eid al-Fitr holiday, Indonesia has seen a spike in cases, with the positivity rate exceeding 23% on Wednesday and daily cases approaching 10,000, the highest level since late February.
In its latest report, the World Health Organization urged Indonesia to tighten its lockdown with increased transmission due to worrisome variables and increasing household occupancy rates that require urgent action.
Additional reporting by Kate Lamb in Sydney, Agustinos Pio da Costa and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Editing by Michael Perry
Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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