Fully vaccinated travellers tested positive

biko

Six people who tested positive for COVID-19 in hotel quarantine in the past three weeks had already been fully vaccinated overseas, revealing the difficulties with implementing a vaccine passport system.

According to data from NSW Health’s weekly COVID-19 surveillance report, between April 10 and May 1, six people in quarantine who reported being fully vaccinated were among the 150 overseas cases recorded.

One had received a one-shot vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson, and the remaining cases had received both doses of a two-shot vaccine, such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna.

Two other cases were recorded earlier in April in people who had received both doses of a two-shot vaccine but were exposed to COVID-19 within 14 days of their second dose, suggesting they may not have been fully vaccinated when they caught the virus.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fully-vaccinated-travellers-test-positive-in-sydney-hotel-quarantine-20210507-p57pt4.html

is_that_so

That lack of guarantee has always been a problem with them. Even so it's less of an issue where you are prepared to record a good number of cases and function normally, just as long as they don't translate into too many hospitalisations. It's a bit of a nightmare for a country like Australia who look like they were banking on them.

Testing positive doesn’t mean much. The vaccine isn’t fully sterilising. It stops most, and reduces the severity on all.

OwenM

The difficulty is your fear, not the vaccinated people.

PCR testing can give a positive result weeks after recovery and weeks after an individual has stopped being infectious.

And yes even though a vaccinated person can 'catch' the virus, the probability of them having anything other than mild symptoms is very low, also the probability of them passing the virus to others is much lower. This is how we expect the vaccines to work. Eliminating the virus from circulation would be brilliant but it's not currently a public health goal and it is not likely to be come one.

Jim_Hodge

I wonder why it say "such as Johnson & Johnson". It would mean more if they stated what vaccines they had had.

begbysback

Oh covid won’t go away
Oh covid is here to stay

Zero covid poem - begysback (circa 2021)

Pandiculation

None of the vaccine makers are claiming anything other than their products prevent you from developing severe COVID-19.

When you consider that the vaccine provides your immune system with the ability to recognise and kill or suppress the coronavirus, that’s enough to prevent it doing you any harm but it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily virus free entirely but that also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re infected and shedding virus either.

There’s still a lot to be analysed about the whole thing.

There’s a fair possibility that Australia and NZ may be years opening up if they can’t convince their populations to get vaccinated due to a perception of no local threat, but also the PCR testing will likely show presence of virus but it’s questionable as to whether that is an active asymptotic infection or just that someone has been revised to it.

We’ve never used PCR like this for mass screening of travel and there’s an abundance of caution principle to all what’s being done.

I could see certain aspects of tourism really being somewhat off the agenda, certainly in and out of Australia and NZ, for several more years.

I think if you’ve long term mandatory quarantine just aimed to every inbound destination it’s really just going to make any stay that’s less than 6 weeks a bit pointless and that does appear to be where things are going in Aus ages NZ. I doubt there’ll be a political will or public appetite to lift the border restrictions anytime soon.

OwenM

Pandiculation wrote: »

None of the vaccine makers are claiming anything other than their products prevent you from developing severe COVID-19.

When you consider that the vaccine provides your immune system with the ability to recognise and kill or suppress the coronavirus, that’s enough to prevent it doing you any harm but it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily virus free entirely but that also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re infected and shedding virus either.

There’s still a lot to be analysed about the whole thing.

There’s a fair possibility that Australia and NZ may be years opening up if they can’t convince their populations to get vaccinated due to a perception of no local threat, but also the PCR testing will likely show presence of virus but it’s questionable as to whether that is an active asymptotic infection or just that someone has been revised to it.

We’ve never used PCR like this for mass screening of travel and there’s an abundance of caution principle to all what’s being done.

I could see certain aspects of tourism really being somewhat off the agenda, certainly in and out of Australia and NZ, for several more years.

And 'screening is not diagnosis', we've heard that a few times in respect of the cervical check scandal.

Pandiculation

OwenM wrote: »

And 'screening is not diagnosis', we've heard that a few times in respect of the cervical check scandal.

I think though the issues in a country that has managed to keep COVID out is that you’re going to have little appetite to take risks by opening to travel. So I would suspect Australia and NZ will likely just remain extremely complicated to travel to for several more years.

I’d doubt you’ll see normalisation of travel to either of them until maybe 2025.

If you’ve long term use of border quarantine, it’s just going to drop off the tourism list for most people other than those wanting to spend say a minimum of maybe 6 or 8 weeks.

is_that_so

Pandiculation wrote: »

None of the vaccine makers are claiming anything other than their products prevent you from developing severe COVID-19.

When you consider that the vaccine provides your immune system with the ability to recognise and kill or suppress the coronavirus, that’s enough to prevent it doing you any harm but it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily virus free entirely but that also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re infected and shedding virus either.

There’s still a lot to be analysed about the whole thing.

There’s a fair possibility that Australia and NZ may be years opening up if they can’t convince their populations to get vaccinated due to a perception of no local threat, but also the PCR testing will likely show presence of virus but it’s questionable as to whether that is an active asymptotic infection or just that someone has been revised to it.

We’ve never used PCR like this for mass screening of travel and there’s an abundance of caution principle to all what’s being done.

I could see certain aspects of tourism really being somewhat off the agenda, certainly in and out of Australia and NZ, for several more years.

The levels in many EU countries and the US would not be tolerated in some parts of the world, yet they are a point at which we are relaxing restrictions. As I've said before 5,000 cases a day with no hospitalisations is a cold. At some stage you do need to get beyond the total of identified cases.

Chris_5339762

The thing with this is that the vaccines are what, 95% effective against symptomatic COVID.

Thats a 5% chance, or 1 in 20 fully vaccinated people who happened to have been infected with COVID.

Those people, the data is showing (or at least beginning to show), that the 1 in 20 are just simply not going to get severe COVID, require hospitalisation, or die from it. Or spread it - vaccinated people much less likely to transmit it.

Yes, this will happen, but really it is not a big deal. In a population with a certain background level of COVID it is a really good outcome, actually. ANd it is inevitable.

It will be an issue, as discussed, with AUS/NZ, who want to keep it out altogether. They can't open up at all unless they accept some low level of COVID spread in a (vaccinated) community.

Pandiculation

is_that_so wrote: »

The levels in many EU countries and the US would not be tolerated in some parts of the world, yet they are a point at which we are relaxing restrictions. As I've said before 5,000 cases a day with no hospitalisations is a cold. At some stage you do need to get beyond the total of identified cases.

Well that’s always been the assumption. There comes a point in this where the only solutions are vaccination and treatments, as the hard social measures are just going to be like trying to catch water with a sieve if it’s widespread and in the community.

We weren’t able to create a total travel bubble here or anywhere in Europe or North America and its not realistic to just remain in a containment system forever. That’s not a functioning society really. It’s just a state of emergency. It can only go on for so long.

Once the vaccines are widespread and the virus isn’t able to do any harm whether or not it’s being detected will hopefully begin to become irrelevant.

The reality of it is the only solution to this is mass immunisation. I’m just very thankful to science and sheer luck that this happened at a time when we have growing abilities to create vaccines that appear to be working rather nicely.

JoChervil

There is a possibility that certificates could have been fake, hence need for passports.

Cosmo Kramer

biko wrote: »

Six people who tested positive for COVID-19 in hotel quarantine in the past three weeks had already been fully vaccinated overseas, revealing the difficulties with implementing a vaccine passport system.


https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fully-vaccinated-travellers-test-positive-in-sydney-hotel-quarantine-20210507-p57pt4.html

I really think most people are able to see through this kind of xenophobia at this point, we have seen the worst of people come to the surface in this pandemic but hopefully we're moving on now. The "blame the foreigner" viewpoint has more than run its course, especially in Ireland given that many other countries are far ahead in terms of vaccinations and reduced case numbers than Ireland are.

If fully vaccinated people wish to travel they should now be encouraged to do so. While this article isn't specifically related to Ireland it should be noted that any fully vaccinated people that wish to visit Ireland pose far less of a risk than the unvaccinated majority of the Irish population. It is past time to open up unrestricted access to these people, provided of course that they can demonstrate that they have received a full course of an approved vaccine.

Lumen

This is a big deal for Australia (the origin of this story) because they have only administered about 10 vaccine doses per 100 population, so the risk of a massive wave of infection requires extreme vigilance (we were at that point only 2 months ago!).

For the same reason, use of term "vaccine passport" makes sense in Australia in a way it doesn't in Europe, because Europe will be so well vaccinated by the time travel is fully opened up that a negative PCR test will be sufficient.

Pandiculation

I think the Australian and NZ situation is a bit different in the sense they pursued zero COVID and just kept it out with border measures and due to their being very far away.

Europe and North America will be fully vaccinated by the end of the summer or early autumn, so we just won’t have a the risk of deadly outbreaks anymore.

We will need to keep a close eye on variants and probably continue to use targeted quarantine from places that have very active levels of infection and low vaccination but that’s about it and the vaccines will rollout finally globally within a few years.

daydorunrun

biko wrote: »

Six people who tested positive for COVID-19 in hotel quarantine in the past three weeks had already been fully vaccinated overseas, revealing the difficulties with implementing a vaccine passport system.


https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fully-vaccinated-travellers-test-positive-in-sydney-hotel-quarantine-20210507-p57pt4.html

There was a story in the news about two vaccinated staff members in a nursing home here that tested positive, they locked the nursing home down. There was a subsequent (mush smaller) article a few days later saying they were retested and it came back negative.

It's been long known that PCR (which is hugely magnified) detects virus, not illness or transmissibility.

It would be great if testing caught up to a point where only infectious people tested possible, probably impossible I know.

I love Australia and New Zealand, I've spent a good bit of time there over the years which I'm thankful for now as I think they will be closed now for many years.

seamus

six people in quarantine who reported being fully vaccinated

There's one problem right there. The individuals themselves reported being fully vaccinated.

We already know that people who are willing to travel during a pandemic are more likely to ignore health restrictions or falsify documents. In some countries, agents are offering negative PCR "results" for sale to people at check-in to get them through the border on the other side.

Also as mentioned above, there's no comparative figure. If there were 2,000 travellers, and half were vaccinated, half weren't, then the infection rate in the vaccinated group is 0.6% and the infection rate in the unvaccinated group is 14.4%.

This is perfectly fine and exactly as we would expect. In fact it tells us that the vaccines work in preventing transmissible infection.

Mass vaccination is the only way out of this, countries which aren't doing it are going to have to continue screening and quarantining.

Countries which are mass vaccinating will be able to open up without mandatory quarantine.

mmclo

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

The thing with this is that the vaccines are what, 95% effective against symptomatic COVID.

Thats a 5% chance, or 1 in 20 fully vaccinated people who happened to have been infected with COVID.

Efficacy means the vaccine reduces your normal risk by 95%, so from about 2% to 0.1%

biko

Cosmo Kramer wrote: »

I really think most people are able to see through this kind of xenophobia at this point, we have seen the worst of people come to the surface in this pandemic but hopefully we're moving on now.

Not sure why you bring that up, is there something in the article to point toward xenophobia?
The article even mentions "returned travellers" so it could be Aussies returning home for all we know.

Lumen

mmclo wrote: »

Efficacy means the vaccine reduces your normal risk by 95%, so from about 2% to 0.1%

Not sure where the 2% comes from. The risk of symptomatic COVID from an infection is more like 50%.

daydorunrun

daydorunrun wrote: »

It's been long known that PCR (which is hugely magnified) detects virus, not illness or transmissibility.

If you were infected and recovered in recent months prior to vaccination there is a very high likelihood that you will receive a positive PCR.
This does not mean you are a risk to anyone.
I don't understand the Hullaballoo here.

PCR amplifies remnants of the virus long after it have been successfully fought off by the host.

OwenM

Lumen wrote: »

Not sure where the 2% comes from. The risk of symptomatic COVID from an infection is more like 50%.

...in unvaccinated people?

In vaccinated people it is orders of magnitude smaller.