January 24, 2023 – 01:04
The Argentine pediatric pathologist, who lives in the United Kingdom, explained what this medical product is about, when it should be applied, its immunization period and how the Ómicron virus is behaving. The specialist emphasized that if a person wants to be vaccinated and for some reason it is not available, they have to take the monovalent one, since the objective “is to prevent serious illness and death.”
Given the appearance of new variants of coronavirus, different from the original virus that was identified in Wuhan (China), both the laboratories that produce Moderna and Pfizer have developed a new type of vaccine: the bivalent. It contains messenger RNA components of the Sars-CoV-2 virus and a common RNA component between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the Omicron strain. In this regard, the prestigious pathologist spoke about the scope and effect of this vaccine, which is expected to reach the province today.
Is the bivalent vaccine more effective than monovalent doses?
Yes, because the virus has evolved, as happens with the flu virus, which every 24 months has to change and adapt the dose to the new virus. So, the virus in all the original vaccines is a virus that no longer exists, because the variant that now circulates is that of Omicron, since November 26, 2021. This new bivalent vaccine, both from Pfizer and Moderna, has a 50% of the ancestral corona virus, which is the “old” vaccine, while 50% is new, contains the Omicron virus corona proteins in its early stages BA.4 and BA.5, and has efficacy to protect of the virus that is circulating now and that previous vaccines do not have as much.
Although the bivalent vaccine is for people over 12 years of age, will children ever use it?
There are vaccines that can be used for young children, but in reality those who should be prioritized for this new vaccine are people over 60 and those with risk factors. That is, they are the people who, even vaccinated, can have a serious disease. And it is important because at this time not only does the vaccine prevent against serious illness or death, but also against situations such as prolonged Covid, which could occur in one of 10 people.
In addition, in these older people, as a consequence of Covid, an increase in the number of heart attacks, heart attacks and strokes was seen in the following year. So surely it will be for children, but children in general do not have a serious illness as they do in the case of older adults.
Does this new dose prevent contagion to some extent or is it only so that the disease is not more serious?
Yes, because the virus has changed, it means that the antibodies that the previous vaccine awakens do not recognize it because it is no longer the same. It’s like a late model car and a previous model car, the new one is faster and has more benefits. And that is what happens with the new virus, the previous vaccines arouse antibodies that do not necessarily recognize the new virus, because the vaccine continues to work for a virus that no longer exists.
But the important thing is that if one is going to get vaccinated and the bivalent dose is not there, the one that is available must be given, because the objective of the vaccine is not to prevent infections, because one can contract the virus even after being vaccinated, but it is to prevent serious illness and death.
Older monovalent vaccines still protect against it. Now, the bivalent vaccines are a little more effective and a week after the person has been vaccinated, antibodies would have developed, because obviously this is a booster dose. Between four and six months immunity begins to decline.
Is the vaccine here to stay?
Surely when the pandemic ceases to be among us, this will become endemic, it will be the fifth endemic coronavirus, the others generally cause colds, except for Mers-COV, which is from camels, or Sars-COV, which It is from an area of China but does not circulate in another part of the world.
What we are going to see surely is that this vaccine is going to be made annually. It is already being tested to combine it in the same annual injection, to give the flu and Covid vaccine. In the United Kingdom, this vaccine is already being given annually and not every six or five months as in Argentina.
At what point in the pandemic are we?
While we are lucky that the virus has been more contagious and not more deadly, the danger we have is that the virus will mutate again and become a more deadly variety. For example, Mers-COV, which is another coronavirus, has a mortality of 35 percent, that is, 35 out of 100 people die; while Covid has a mortality of 3.5 percent, that is, it is much lower. If the virus were suddenly much more contagious, but also much more lethal, we would be in a more serious situation.
Hoping that this does not happen, the situation in China at this time is worrying, because there would be some 250 million people infected and that country has gone from having zero tolerance to saying enough about confinements and not restrictive measures. Somehow that was also doing the rest of the world. We did it in the last year, but not in China.
So, the problem in China is that having so many cases and a saturation of the health system can generate so many infections, giving rise to a new variant. Now, outside of China and Australia, which have many cases, the rest of the world is down. What China has shown us is that we cannot go back to a strict quarantine.
We have to live with the virus until the pandemic ends. And this is by vaccinating ourselves, ventilating closed spaces so that there is air circulation, using a mask if there are many cases. If a person has symptoms, they should be tested, if it is positive, stay at home until they test negative. The elderly with more symptoms tend to be positive for more than ten days.
