Herd Immunity, the Best Way out of SARS COV-2 Pandemic: Preaching the Good News about COVID-19 Vaccine and Vaccine Efficacy

Aims: To investigate vaccine efficacy amongst the vaccinated population and also to investigate the willingness to be vaccinated among the unvaccinated population of Oke-Ogun region of Oyo State, Nigeria.

Study Design: A snowball sampling approach was used.

Place and Duration of Study: Samples were collected randomly from the general populace of Oke-Ogun, Oyo State, between 20th of January to 20th of April, 2022. Analysis of samples was carried out at the medical laboratory unit of Adeniyi Memorial Hospital, Igbope.

Methodology: 500 consenting adults were recruited to participate in the study (250 health workers and 250 non health workers, aged 18 years and above) vaccinated or unvaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. A standard questionnaire was administered to the participants and consenting adults were sampled and tested using a SARS-CoV-2 rapid diagnostic antigen test kit. A 2 x 2 contingency table (chi-square method, 2-tailed with 1 degree of freedom test) was used to determine the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Results: Among the 500 participants, 328 (65.6%) participants have been vaccinated, although 214 (42.8%) participants accounted for full vaccination. Higher vaccination rate 220 (88%) occurred among the health workers compared to 153 (61.2%) among the other participants. From the non-immunized participants, only 32 (18.6%) are willing to get vaccinated immediately, 95 (55.23%) were not willing to get the vaccination unless they know more about the virus and the vaccines. Infection rate was seen to be higher among the unvaccinated population (10.24%) compared to the vaccinated population (2.6%). Furthermore, infection among the unvaccinated health worker (13.3%) was seen to be higher than the unvaccinated non-health workers participants (9.2%).

Conclusion: Covid-19 vaccine has proved to be efficient with high degree of immunity conferred on fully-immunized individuals. This will help in the reduction of the severity, mortality of the disease and reduction of the impact of the pandemic on the National Health System and economy of countries.