Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine seems to be the best in preventing deaths, a new study in Singapore has found. According to the study, Singapore witnessed the fewest deaths among those who were given the Moderna vaccine, while the highest was among those who received the Sinovac Biontech Ltd.'s vaccine. The study was part of how different kinds of vaccines are holding up to the real world.
Last year, a total of 802 people died from Covid-19 in the city-state of which 555 or about 70% weren't fully vaccinated, health minister Ong Ye Kung told the parliament on Monday, showing the life-saving impact of vaccines. Singapore is administering a number of vaccines and so far, it has found Moderna to be the most effective.
Moderna Takes the Lead
The Moderna vaccine has so far been the most effective in preventing deaths in Singapore, according to a government report released by the city-state's health minister Ong Ye Kung. Singapore so far has reported one of the lowest number of deaths among vaccinated people in the world.
The report shows on average 11 deaths among 100,000 people who were administered the Sinovac shots, while there were 7.8 deaths among those who received Sinopharm. However, when it came to Pfizer's mRNA shots the deaths further fell to 6.2. Moderna's is far lower form all those with just 1 fatality per 100,000 who were administered their vaccines.
That said, Ong didn't provide the finer details and if factors like age and timing of taking the vaccine doses were taken into account. Also, the sample size wasn't revealed. However, the results definitely are now going to cast doubt on the efficacy of the two vaccines by Sinovac and Sinopharm Group, which is being widely used in developed countries.
Initial laboratory studies have already suggested that Sinovac, even with a booster dose, is not effective against the highly-transmissible omicron variant that's now dominating the world.
Challenging Times for Singapore
Singapore has so far recorded 285,000 Covid-19 cases with the city-state majorly depending on mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to grapple with the surge in cases last year caused by the Delta variant. About 87% of the total population is fully vaccinated now but fears have once again started escalating following the discovery of the Omicron variant.
However, the Omicron variant hasn't spread much in Singapore yet. Ong reiterated that the key strategy remains to live with Covid-19, which includes not locking down the country's borders.
The government "cannot over-liberalize all social activities" and remove all restrictions. Singapore will respond "flexibly and appropriately to twists and turns that the pandemic situation may take," he said.
