Seychelles say active COVID cases more than doubled in week. Seychelles is the country

[JohnSJ]

which has the most people vaccinated. Of note, most of the people vacinated there have been with the vaccine developed in China, and a smaller number have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine

The question is, is this due to Covid variants, less effective vaccines being used, or both

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/coronavirus/2021/05/why-highly-vaccinated-seychelles-experiencing-covid-spike

[CrispyQ]

1. Questions, for anyone who can answer.

1. Once a variant is identified, how long to make a booster?

2. Will all the vaccines require a booster, or just the mRNA? Will the old technology ones like J&J let the immune system adjust?

3. What if you get both vaccines, the old tech & the new tech?

I see masking & distancing for a long time into my future.

[Hugin]

2. On #3...

There was an article posted in the last week here in DU which suggested mixing vaccines may have additional benefit.

It was only a preliminary study, however. Nothing solid.

#1: A booster can be developed fairly quickly. It is my understanding that Pfizer had it's initial mRNA COVID vaccine developed WITHIN WEEKS of the start of the pandemic. Most of time between then and deployment was in testing and figuring out the logistics of distributing the vaccine.

#2: Sure, there will be boosters. Some of them are already undergoing testing.

[PA Democrat]

3. According to the article, 65% of cases were in unvacccinated or only partially vaccinated people.

Fully vaccinated people who got Covid had received the Sinopharm vaccine which has been reported to be less effective.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. Their vaccines aren't as effective, for starters.

Explained: How does China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine work?
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/how-does-chinas-sinopharm-covid-19-vaccine-work-7307067/
Out of the major vaccines being used in the world, Sinopharm, Covaxin and Sinovac (also developed by China) are the only ones that use inactivated virus. Others such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are mRNA vaccines, whereas Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik and Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccines use a viral vector.
How well does this vaccine protect against COVID-19?
As per WHO, Sinopharm has an efficacy of about 79 percent for symptomatic and hospitalised disease for all age groups. However it notes that since few adults over the age of 60 years were enrolled, the efficacy in the age group is not clear.

Moderna and Pfizer's efficacy rate is about 95%, and their efficacy is over 99% for hospitalization/death according to their trials and real-world data so far.

[Hortensis]

5. All that and 16% of cases are foreign visitors who are allowed in

without quarantine or vaccination if they can provide a negative within 3 days of departure. still a large body of unvaccinated locals and tourists, new variants, lesser efficacy. Their experience is an outlier so far and hopefully will mostly remain so.

[Ms. Toad]

6. This is a more traditional vaccine -

They work best for stable viruses. So my guess is that they are running into problems similar to the influenza vaccines. If you guess the wrong variant, it is less (or not) effective. So as the variants increase, the vaccine is less likely to be on target.

https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/four-types-covid-19-vaccine-snapshot