Bulgarian Epidemiologist: Effectiveness of All Vaccines Is Very High between 86 and 92%

The effectiveness of all vaccines remains very high - between 86 and 92% with different drugs, with all variants of the virus so far.

This was stated to BTV by the epidemiologist Dr. Petar Markov, a lecturer at the London School of Tropical Medicine.

According to him, it's not correct to talk about a vaccination breakthrough in cases of newly infected people who have already been vaccinated. 

Vaccines are not designed to protect against infection, but against serious illness and death, he stressed.

"We cannot say that they do not work if there are many new infections," said the epidemiologist. Dr. Markov explained the difference between giving a third dose and a booster dose of vaccine.

"The third dose is given to specific contingents of patients - people with severe autoimmune diseases, cancer, HIV, people with transplants."

Their immunity fails to make good enough protection from just two doses, he added.

"A booster dose is given to healthy people in whom over time, the immunity has started to decline and needs to be strengthened, but there is no need for that at the moment," he said.

Peter Markov also explained the possibility of the emergence of so-called new "supervirus" - COVID-22.

It is very likely to expect more variants, even more contagious than the current ones.

"The new variants are more adaptive and replace the previous ones, with the old ones circulating at a lower frequency. However, the big future risk is when parts of two different viruses combine, which we are yet to see " the epidemiologist warned.