Seychellois President Wavel Ramkalawan said the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the country has proven to be effective, and both China's Sinopharm vaccine and AstraZeneca's shot have served the population "very well."

Ramkalawan's remarks came after the island nation in the Indian Ocean saw an increase of coronavirus cases over the last couple of weeks, and some 37 percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week had been fully vaccinated, the country's health ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The seven day rolling average of positive cases increased from 120 on April 30 to 314 on May 8, the ministry said.

The tourist destination country, with a population of less than 100,000, has fully vaccinated nearly 60 percent of its people. As the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a highly transmissible one, it needs at least 60 to 70 percent of the population to have immunity to really break the chain of transmission, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Among those fully vaccinated in the country, 57 percent got Sinopharm vaccine, while 43 percent received AstraZeneca shots.

Ramkalawan said that Sinopharm vaccine has been given to people aged 18 to 60 years' old while people above 60 years' old have received AstraZeneca vaccine.

Asked whether that means the two vaccines are not effective on its population, Ramkalawan replied with a resolute no.

"People may be infected, but they are not sick. Only a small number are. Isn't this how the vaccine is supposed to help us? So what is happening is normal," he was quoted as saying.

"If the vaccines were not effective, people would have died when infected and there would have been many more people requiring hospitalization," he said.

"What we can say is that people who are unvaccinated and are against vaccines are those who are sick," he said, explaining that 75 to 80 percent of those who need hospitalization were not vaccinated.

"Again this reflects the efficiency of the vaccines. And we want to say that the two vaccines, Sinopharm and Covidshield [by] AstraZeneca have served our population very well," he said.

As for the increase of new cases in the past couple of weeks, Ramkalawan said it came after the reopening of the country on March 25, and the new cases are mainly people who have not taken any vaccine or those who have received only their first dose.

"But it is important to mention that up to this date, Seychelles has not recorded any case of mortality of people fully vaccinated. And this has shown us the efficacy of the vaccination," he said.  

The WHO said on Tuesday that it was reviewing coronavirus data from Seychelles.