The first question should be are the vaccines themselves leading to these spikes?
A) How? Because the vaccines available in the US, the UK, and Gibraltar (who receives their vaccines from the UK per an agreement in place) only produce one surface protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus whereas the RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 looks for nucleotide sequences in the viral RNA. The nucleotide sequence isn’t present anywhere in the vaccine or its products.
B) This small increase in new cases observed in Gibraltar happened months after these people were vaccinated. Gibraltar primarily used the Pfizer vaccine with a small number receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine because of known allergies. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine, the mRNA has a half-life of hours, which means it’s completely broken down within days.
So on the one hand, it’s not possible for the vaccines to lead to positive test results. That’s not what the tests look for and there’s no virus contained in the vaccines to get someone sick with it. And on the other hand, even if that weren’t the case, the timing makes no sense. So no, the vaccines are not leading to the small increase in cases observed in Gibraltar.
yes