A mass vaccination program against coronavirus has been underway in Russia for several months. However, some vaccinated people are still infected with Covid-19. Doctors and scientists advise even those who have been vaccinated not to remove their masks.
Mass vaccination against coronavirus has been underway in Russia since January, with more than 14 million people vaccinated. Currently, two vaccines are being administered in the country – “Sputnik V” and “EpiVacCorona” from the Vector Center. Some vaccinated individuals report becoming ill even after receiving two doses of the vaccine. However, such cases do not disprove the effectiveness of vaccines or indicate their poor quality.
The BBC’s Russian service spoke to people who have fallen ill after vaccination, as well as doctors, to understand why people get sick after vaccination, how the disease progresses, and whether vaccinated people should follow restrictions, including wearing masks.
Natalya participated in clinical trials of “Sputnik V”: the first component was administered to her on September 20, 2020, and the second component on October 10. She underwent a test for antibodies to the S protein – this test shows whether the body produces antibodies after vaccination. The woman was found to have antibodies. Four months after the first vaccination at work, Natalia’s co-workers began falling ill. “Almost everyone had the same symptoms: low fever, runny nose, sore throat, weakness and muscle aches. Two of them tested positive for PCR,” she says. Soon, Natalia herself began to experience symptoms. “I also started with a stuffy nose, then a strong runny nose, no drops helped, not even water. I didn’t lose my sense of smell. Then there was a feeling of scratching in the throat. The temperature was 36.9-37.1,” says Natalia. According to her, she had a negative PCR test, but about three weeks later she took an antibody test and it turned out that she had the infection.
Another woman, Natalia, who was interviewed by the BBC, also had an easy course of the disease. She received her second dose of the “Sputnik V” vaccine on January 16, and began experiencing symptoms on February 13. She took a home antigen test, which came back positive. The illness began with a low-grade fever, Natalya says, along with a cough, sore throat, nasal congestion and weakness. On the third day, she lost her sense of smell and experienced muscle aches, but her temperature normalized. According to her, she doesn’t know where she was infected: the woman works from home, she hasn’t been to any new places, and if she has had contact with anyone, it was only while wearing a respirator. Smells that were absent for five or six days have returned to her, and muscle pains that lasted for over a week have disappeared. Natalya continues to have nasal congestion. A recent antigen test was negative.
According to experts, the news that a person who has already been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus has still contracted COVID-19 should not come as a surprise. Strictly speaking, none of the vaccine manufacturers promised otherwise in advance – nor could they. Some vaccines actually provide what is known as sterilizing immunity: as soon as our body detects a known pathogen, it is immediately destroyed without even having time to enter the cell, let alone cause an infection. In the world of vaccines, however, this is the exception rather than the rule. Most drugs provide only partial protection, not preventing infection but reducing the severity of the disease. This is exactly how the Covid-19 vaccine works. To explain the benefits of vaccination simply and clearly, many experts use the analogy of dice. By contracting a virus, the infected person is, in a sense, playing a game of chance and “rolling the dice”. If you get one or two – consider yourself lucky: it is possible that the infected person will not even notice the infection, recovering at home with virtually no symptoms. Three or four – the patient will need professional medical care, possibly oxygen. Five indicates a severe form of the disease, with a high risk of ending up in intensive care. Six – fatal outcome. Vaccination is like “coloring” the dots on a dice – in a way that makes it impossible to roll any more fours. However, you still have to roll the dice. To everyone. And maybe even more than once.
In the messenger “Telegram” there is a whole group of people who got sick after vaccination. At the time of publishing this article there were over 6 thousand people in it. Group administrator and candidate of biological sciences Alena Makarova, in an interview with the BBC, says that after their civilian vaccination, 84 people wrote to her about their experience with the coronavirus, and 14 participants in clinical trials, who took antibody tests and believe that they definitely received the vaccine, – in total, she knows about 98 infected people. Of these 98 cases, 78 people had symptoms similar to COVID-19 (39 of them tested positive for PCR or antibodies). Another 20 people had prolonged close contact with infected people but did not get sick, Makarova said.
Makarova noted one of the features that many of the infected group participants talked about – a strong runny nose, similar to allergic rhinitis. “Perhaps this difference in the course of Covid-19 after vaccination from a “natural” disease,” the group administrator suggests. Makarova herself, along with her husband, also contracted Covid-19 after vaccination – they had contact with an infected relative a few days after the second vaccination. “We both had mild illnesses: my husband had symptoms of an acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI) and a subfebrile temperature (37-37.4) for four days, and I had anosmia for a week and a strange temperature of 37.2 for two weeks. Makarova had already had COVID-19 in June of last year, and according to her, the disease was much more severe then. “That’s why I think the vaccine protected me, because the antibodies disappeared in October-November,” she says.
According to the developers of “Sputnik”, immunity after vaccination should be assessed on the 42nd day after the first injection. It is on this day that they recommend a post-vaccination analysis for antibodies against the S protein. Another reason why you may become infected after vaccination is that contact with the virus may occur before a full immune response is developed. There are also situations where a person comes for vaccination already infected during the incubation period of the disease. The developers of “Sputnik” estimated the duration of immunity against the virus at two years – however, it is not entirely clear on what specific data they based this conclusion, since the first doses of the vaccine were administered to people last summer, which means that they were observed for just over six months before the publication in the Lancet. Sokolov suggests that this conclusion is based on the analysis of data on the adenovirus vector vaccine against the Ebola virus, also developed by the Gamaleya Center. “I think they have certain reasons (possibly animal control) to believe that the duration of immunity will be like this. But this is just an extrapolation of the fact, nothing more,” the doctor says.
In the Department of Intensive Care and Intensive Therapy of the Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Medicine, where patients with coronavirus infection are treated. “Virus neutralizing antibodies should be 1:3200, and it can be higher. This is good.”