The prestigious Canadian immunologist Sir John Bell has explained in The Guardian two possible futures for the COVID-19 pandemic: “Two things can happen: one is that vaccines really last a year or 18 months against death, or we get a much more pathogenic variant, in which case we need another [vacuna]”. The expert believes that there is a “very high” possibility that, if a new variant emerges, it will be more or less mild like Omicron, and “very low but not zero” that it will be more lethal.
Bell relies on the second generation of vaccines against the COVID-19, which is yet to come. These will be injections use T cells to kill infected cells and they could offer longer immunity than current vaccines, but a sterilizing solution (a vaccine that prevents transmission of the virus) would be the ultimate solution to the pandemic. In fact, the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC) of Spain is developing an intranasal sterilizing vaccine that could be ready by 2023according to Luis Enjuanes, virologist and head of the Coronavirus Laboratory of the CSIC National Center for Biotechnology, at Infarma Madrid 2022.
After it emerged that a vaccine was being developed and before the planet was immunized, BBC Radio 4 asked Bell if injections would return the world to normal. His answer was forceful: “Yes, yes, yes”. In December 2021, with the Ómicron cases through the roof, the Canadian already explained that the new variant “It was not the same disease that we were seeing a year ago” and that the rates of deaths from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were “history”.
Booster dose, for vulnerable groups
“Vaccines have had a very powerful and long-lasting effect on death…most people who have received the vaccine are completely safe”, says the expert. “The people who die now, since last July, are not vaccinated. That’s tragic,” he laments.
So the immunologist advises giving more booster shots next fall to people over 65 and the immunocompromised. Healthy people, young people and children do not have the same need for a vaccine as vulnerable groups, unless COVID-19 develops a new, more aggressive variant.
Bell was one of the first members of the vaccine task force set up by the Government to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Oxford (AstraZeneca), and now takes pride in the dose they managed to come up with. Oxford has so far sold some 3 billion doses of AstraZeneca in 180 countries.
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