The Spanish public health authorities assume this “we will not be able to eliminate” Sars-CoV-2, so the “most likely scenario” they manage is that it behaves like a respiratory virus with peaks in autumn-winter incidence and against which risk groups should be vaccinated annually.
This was expressed on Thursday by the head of the Vaccination Programs Area of ​​the Ministry of Health, Aurora Limia, during the VI Vaccination Conference of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE) in which high-level experts analyzed, among other issues, the new sera and strategies against covid.
Booster dose every three months?
The Spanish health authorities are waiting for what will happen this season with the pandemic and also with the flu; in other countries, he explained, they indicate a need administer booster doses every three months to vulnerable groupswhich is when you start noticing a drop in neutralizing antibodies.
However, Limia, who coordinates the anticovid strategy in our country, sees “unlikely” that it will be what will be applied in Spaineven though he clarified that “everything will depend on how the epidemiological situation will evolve”.
“I would not understand that this is done every three months and I think no one would, especially if there is no pressure that there are problems with people getting infected and having serious illnesses,” he said.
The experts work with different scenarios, although there is one they consider the most likely, as long as things remain more or less as they are now. “It is clear that we will not be able to put an end to it; (Sars-CoV-2) will probably end up behaving like a respiratory virus and will be more prevalent in the fall / winter”, with which “vaccination will probably go together with flu” , which is given once a year to risk groups.
In whom are the booster doses indicated?
For now, the reinforcements are listed at older than 60 years and vulnerable people like immunocompromisedand they are getting the four vaccines approved in Europe for this, the bivalent ones from Pfizer and Moderna updated to BA.1 and BA.4 / BA.5.
Two more could be added by the end of the year, in this case of proteins, the one developed by Sanofì and Spanish Hyperrecalled AgustĂn Portela, head of the Biological Products, Advanced Therapies and Biotechnology Division of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (Aemps).
The two are inside evaluation process by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). “Between this month and next, the EMA has to make a decision that we hope will be positive in both cases, so we would have six vaccines and, therefore, a large public health cast to decide what time.”
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If approved, in both cases it will be a booster dose, not a primary vaccination; door he does not believe that there are “very big” differences in terms of efficacy as a “booster” with those of mRNA -Pfizer and Moderna-but they have an additional advantage, namely that “they are stored in the refrigerator and can reach many other countries where it is impossible to have freezing systems” to store them, he concluded.
