The bomb exploded early this Sunday: the head of the Chinese disease control agency said that the country’s vaccines against Covid-19 did not have very high protection rates and that they were evaluating new formulas to reinforce their effectiveness.
The news came to Chile quickly, since precisely the Chinese Sinovac has been the vaccine that the country has acquired the most. For this reason, from the Institute of Public Health they quickly calm down.
“As in everything, it is always the headline of the news and the headline leaves any statement and they are left with a sentence and that is what happened here and thank goodness it was immediately clarified. It is appreciated that the CDC has come out to clarify. From everything he said, they were left with a sense of efficacy that was not correct “, says to La Tercera Heriberto García, director of the ISP.
Indeed, the commotion caused by the words of the Chinese CDC leader was so much that scientists and experts from around the world were alarmed, forcing the same official, Gao Fu, to have to clarify that his words were misinterpreted.
“It must be made clear that what the Sinovac vaccine has shown is that it achieves its effectiveness after two weeks of the second dose. The studies at the university (of Chile) and those that the Minsal will take say the same thing: the number of hospitalized and sick has decreased. That is a good way ”, adds García.
The pharmaceutical chemist clarifies that what has been said, even from Chile, is that the vaccines could require a booster later, “and that is under study”, He assures.
“We know that in the case of CanSino, as it has been a long time since the beginning of the clinical study, they were already seeing that the amount of antibodies in people was decreasing as time passed, like at five or six months. ”, He adds.
The director of the ISP also assures that “in the case of Sinovac and Pfizer they speak of the fact that effectiveness has been diminishing over time in people who have already been vaccinated.” And exemplifies: “But this is also the case with the influenza vaccine and that is why we get vaccinated every year. It is normal for vaccines to behave like this, but we are in the context of a pandemic, where this change is much more noticeable and in a situation one is not aware of this. It is normal that after the time in the vaccines the antibodies go down. What we still do not know is the opportune moment of this booster, but we are studying that a booster of another dose, third or second, will probably be required, depending on each vaccine ”.
In that sense, García assures that it is premature to conclude today when to reinforce the two doses, but that it is something that the researchers are analyzing. “Background, data and time are lacking. This research is going to be done a lot in Chile, because we were the Latin American country with the highest coverage of Sinovac. It will be interesting to see in June-July how this progresses”, He says.
The professional concludes that, on the contrary, “it is not premature (to say that it is effective). It has already been seen how the number of ICU patients over 60 years of age has decreased. Mortality also decreases, that can already be observed. The vaccine is safe and studies show it, especially in risk groups ”.
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