The third booster dose applied by the Dominican Republic with Pfizer serum, combined with two doses of the Sinovac vaccine, is “safe” and “does not produce major events,” according to the results of a study on this subject presented this Thursday in the country.
Research on the effectiveness of the booster dose, conducted between the Dominican Republic and Yale University with samples of 1,600 people, concluded that this third dose extends the protective effects of vaccines.
None of the participants presented “serious events,” said the Executive Branch’s medical adviser for the coronavirus response, Eddy Pérez Then, at a press conference with President Luis Abinader and other authorities at the National Palace.
Although some had pain at the injection site, others fever or fatigue, “less than two months after the application the antibodies rose quite a bit,” he said.
In the people participating in the study, the immune reactions were 40 times higher than the values before receiving the booster dose.
The immune reaction decreased after 28 days, but 70 days after receiving the third dose, the immune reaction continued to be 14 times higher than before the third dose.
Pérez Then, however, refrained from commenting on the effects that this could have on the new variant of the pandemic, omicron, a subject for which the authorities will meet in the next few hours.
The Dominican Republic began to apply the booster dose to people who had been inoculated with Sinovac or Astrazeca in July, in the middle of the third wave of covid-19 in the national territory, and the authorities were convinced today that this decision reduced the effects that produced the first and second waves.
The country went ahead with the plan even though the World Health Organization (WHO) had asked countries not to do so, for lack of scientific evidence and to avoid unnecessary hoarding of vaccines.
With two doses of Sinovac “the protection is high” but with the Pfizer booster “it is wildly high,” said Sten H. Vermund, dean of Public Health and professor of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine.
The plan of the Dominican Republic to reinforce the vaccine against covid-19 “is a successful and efficient strategy for all the people who received Sinovac and Aztrazeneca,” he added.
For his part, President Abinader once again defended the effectiveness of the third dose, which initially caused doubts and rejection in the country.
According to the president, the third dose “has been a lethal weapon against the coronavirus.”
So far, 5.6 million people have received two doses and 1.3 million the booster.
In the country, there have been 407,629 cases of covid-19 and 4,210 deaths since March of last year, when the presence of the virus was notified in national territory.
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