Six fully vaccinated people have died in Seychelles, a country which has inoculated more people than any other nation even as it still suffers from heightened Covid-19 pandemic.
Five among those who died had taken Covishield, the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India and the sixth had been given Sinopharm.
The information regarding the deaths was made public by Jude Gedeon, the island nation’s public health commissioner at a press conference on Thursday, Bloomberg reported.
Covishield has mainly been reserved for people over 60 in the Seychelles.
The rise in infections, which surged at the beginning of May and has remained at elevated levels ever since, is likely due to the arrival of the highly-transmissible delta variant, which was first identified in India, Gedeon said.
“It looks like delta came in Seychelles in May which explain the surge at the beginning of May,” Gedeon said. “We presume that the majority of cases we got in May was from that variant.”
The palm-fringed archipelago had rushed to inoculate its 98,000 people so that it could reopen to tourism, the lifeblood of its economy. It has now had to impose restrictions on gatherings and opening times for bars and restaurants.
