‘Please don’t shower me with your Unvaccinated Spittle’, a phrase coined by SVG’s Finance Minister Camilo Gonsalves while addressing Opposition Senator Israel Bruce, has gone viral.
During the budget estimates debate on Monday 13 December, Gonsalves made the statement while Opposition members and himself were engaged in a brawl over why the Public Accounts Committee had not convened to discuss the last 16 audit reports.
In wake of the statement, what does the science say about the viral load of vaccinated and unvaccinated?
A new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.
Other recent studies have shown similar peak viral loads in vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated who contract COVID.
How concerned should we be? Are vaccinated people just as contagious as unvaccinated?
A study in the medical journal The Lancet followed 602 primary close contacts of 471 people with COVID. It documented transmission and viral load in the group.
It found no differences in peak viral loads between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. It also showed a slight decrease in the number of infections in household members between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, suggesting a similar level of infectiousness.
Another unpublished pre-print, which is yet to be reviewed by other scientists, suggests a similar trend in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, as does a CDC report in the US from July, which analysed outbreak data from Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts data came from several significant public events over two weeks in July in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Of 469 COVID cases, 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated people. Viral load was similar in both vaccinated and non-vaccinated groups.
What is viral load?
Viral load refers to the amount of virus present in someone’s bodily fluids at a given point in time. Scientists can measure this by looking at your blood, or more commonly in COVID, swabs of your nose and throat.
Generally, higher viral loads are thought to correspond to a more contagious individual.
However, this isn’t always clear in reality. For example, some people with COVID who don’t have symptoms and have low viral loads transmit more, as they are less likely to follow social distancing, mask-wearing, and stay at home.
In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19. Officials’ use of this phrase might have encouraged one scientist to claim that “the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19”.1 But this view is far too simple.
Once infected, vaccinated people seem to transmit COVID similarly to unvaccinated people. Yet, many vaccinated people are walking around this holiday season thinking their immunisations are force fields that protect them and shield vulnerable loved ones. They are not.
