/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/F64EV4IUJRE6LMBH64CODSNWPI.jpg "Vaccines against COVID-19: Is it possible to exchange them to administer them to the population?")
Days ago, the British government warned of an imminent risk situation to use a dose of another vaccine if the first was not available for the second administration. Of course, given the confusion, it does not recommend performing this type of action. Why? So far there are no tests that enable this alternative, although studies are being carried out. The United Kingdom authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer / BioNTech and the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines 28 days apart.
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The evidence to date, like any vaccine when started, It is recommended to start with a certain brand and end with the same brand, until there are more studies that support the interchangeability of vaccines regardless of their origin, points out Iris Aguilar, a doctor specializing in family and community medicine (MP 7,046), member of the Argentine Society of Vaccination and Epidemiology (SAVE). Basically, because the immune response is not studied when you exchange brands, in this case of all vaccines against SARS-COV-2. When that’s proven, he emphasized, there is going to be supporting evidence that you can start with one and end with another. It would not be the adverse effects that contraindicate interchangeability, but the power of the immune response.
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From the body that works on vaccines and depends on the government of the United Kingdom (Vaccine Taskforce), they indicated that they would try to administer to people a dose of one type of vaccine and then a booster with a different type, since all approved vaccines , they need two doses each to be more effective in preventing the new coronavirus. Will they be more effective? Because they work in different ways, taking doses of different shots could “maximize” the immune response and provide better and longer-lasting protection, through the method known as “heterologous prime-boost”.
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On the other hand, it is not advisable to exchange or change vaccines. Fundamentally because their manufacturing design is very dissimilar. For example, the English and the Russian are made with vectors, that is, they use an adenovirus that enters the body with a protein that is going to produce the antibodies, says the epidemiological doctor Hugo pizzi (MP 54.101). The two North American vaccines have something different, they have a very small piece of a nano-glycoprotein of the RNA helix and that injected is what begins to produce antibodies. In the specific case of China, for example, it is the old system, where viruses are attenuated. We cannot exchange much less. Whoever gets the first dose of a vaccine must complete it with the scientific arguments for the second dose of the same vaccine. It would be an error, which can even cause certain damage to the immune system., asserted the specialist.
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In other viruses, is interchangeability usually applied? In all calendar vaccines there are not always the same vaccine brands and there is no problem with interchangeability, therefore, surely in the not too distant future, there will also be an endorsement for interchangeability with respect to these vaccines. But in all calendar vaccines, we don’t look at the brand to see if they are interchangeable. Is the evidence what will determine interchangeability? In the future it is likely, if the evidence supports itsays Dr. Iris Aguilar, head of the Department of Immunizations of the Ministry of Health of Mendoza.
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It should be remembered that the technology used by Pfizer is RNA, which introduces into the body a sequence that contains genetic instructions for the person’s own cells to produce antigens and generate an immune response. While the Oxford gene inoculates the coronavirus gene into human cells to produce the unique COVID-19 spike protein, to which the immune system develops a response if the real virus enters the body.
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