(Illustration) A caregiver prepares to vaccinate a patient with a dose of Pfizer vaccine. – Bienvenido Velasco / EFE / SIPA
Two people aged 53 and 68 died in Guyana from a severe form of Covid-19 “although they had been vaccinated a few weeks previously with two doses of Pfizer”, the Regional Health Agency confirmed on Monday ( ARS).
These two patients, two men according to a health source, died at the Cayenne hospital center. They had received their second injection of the Pfizer / BionTech vaccine at the end of February, specifies the ARS. “These two people presented with a history of serious comorbidities and a very fragile state. One of them had an immune system disorder, likely to cause a lesser response to vaccination, ”says ARS Guyana.
A department strongly affected by the Brazilian variant
In this French community in South America considerably exposed to the Brazilian variant, “samples are being sequenced to find out the exact strain of the virus in question”, further indicates the ARS.
“Vaccine failure exists for all types of vaccination. It depends on the state of the immune system of the vaccinated person ”, reacted the director of the Pasteur Institute of Guyana, Dr. Mirdad Kazanji, contacted by AFP.
For the practitioner, “vaccinated people can possibly have viruses which develop in the respiratory tract and, possibly, contaminate others” in the event of a “weakened” immune system and “major co-morbid factors”. “But in the majority of cases, vaccination drastically reduces the number of hospitalizations and serious cases”, he underlines, fearing that this double case “slows down the vaccination campaign in Guyana”.
“At the start of the third wave”
The virologist also deplores that we “let the virus circulate” in Guyana while the territory is “only at the beginning of the third wave: schools are open, restaurants are open, in the neighborhoods now I am sure that people respect neither the wearing of the mask, nor the distancing… ”.
In Guyana, in the most affected cities, the curfew is in place from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekdays and from 7 p.m. on Saturdays to 5 a.m. on Mondays. Vaccination is now open from the age of 18 in a climate of mistrust which remains in the majority. As of April 18, 2.5% of the Guyanese population had received two doses, or 7,314 people out of approximately 300,000 inhabitants, and 5.5% had received one dose.