One year with Covid vaccines – what went wrong?

The first Covid vaccines in the Faroes were administered one year ago today.

More than 90 percent of the 12+ population have been vaccinated, but more than 100 daily Covid cases have been registered in the past three days – with a record-high of more than 200 yesterday.

KvF asked Covid consultant Pál Weihe for his perspective on this.

“You could ask ‘what went wrong?’, but we should also imagine how things would turn out if we had no vaccines. We would probably have had a much scarier scenario,” he says.

He concedes that our expectations regarding herd immunity may have been too high, which he attributes to the unknown nature of the virus.

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“We were searching in the dark. We made some assumptions based on what we had learned from other viruses, but this one turned out to be different – and with subsequent mutations it has become increasingly perplexing.”

It is understandable, he adds, that the public are disappointed and many are starting to throw caution to the wind.

What, then, are the reasons to continue with these restrictions?

“We have been thrown into a different situation now. Omicron is about 8-10 times more contagious than the Delta variant, but there are indications that this new variant causes milder disease,” he says.

“Since the existing vaccines do not appear to offer strong protection against Omicron, it might make sense to let this new variant run its course, but in a controlled fashion and over a prolonged period so as not to overburden our hospitals.”

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But, he adds, removing the restrictions immediately could easily result in the entire Faroese population being infected within a month, which would obviously have catastrophic consequences on our society.

“These restrictions are annoying, but there is no doubt that they serve a good purpose.”

A third of the 12+ population has received a third booster shot of the vaccine, and Weihe expects that we will be offered further doses in the future.

“The fourth shot will most likely be tweaked for new variants. Luckily, it appears to be relatively easy for vaccine producers to adjust their vaccines.”

The coming months

Weihe believes it is not unlikely that a large portion of the population will be infected with Omicron over the next few months.

“If this prediction turns out to be correct, we must hope that the mild symptoms we’re seeing now will continue and as few people as possible will be requiring intensive care,” he says.

“And then, by mid-spring, maybe this will all fade out and those who haven’t yet been vaccinated will get their doses so that they, too, will only suffer mild symptoms if they get infected.”

Looking further ahead, he expects and hopes that the vulnerable population will be offered a tweaked booster shot by this autumn.

New Year’s celebrations

It is too early at this point to let down our guards and let Covid rip through our society, he says.

“Let’s try to have fun on New Year’s Eve, but let’s try to limit our social contacts and practice the safety precautions we have learned for a while longer.”

Corona.fo reported a few days ago that more than ten percent of the population have been infected with Covid since the onset of the pandemic.

For further information about Covid-19 in the Faroes, including daily figures, visit corona.fo.

Hear an interview with Professor Weihe here (starting at 06:35).

Translated by prosa.fo.

More Faroese News in English. (The link on the mobile site under the ‘tænasta’ link inside the three-line menu.)