In Argentina and the rest of the world the shadow of coronavirus is still present. At the local level, especially in the most vulnerable or poorly vaccinated groups, it still impacts with some harshness and takes several dozen lives per week. Although, according to vaccination monitor Nationally, 45% of the population (over 5 years of age) have applied a dose of reinforcement (for many it represents the third injection), the percentage drops drastically to 11.5% when looking at the number of people over 18 who received the second booster. In turn, those who are within this last group, who complied with the immunization plan to the letter, They wonder if they will still have to visit the vaccination center every four months to boost their immunity.
According to him Ministry of Health of the Nationthere are still no definitions on when another booster will be applied, which for some will be the fifth inoculation and for others, such as those over 50 who completed their initial scheme with Sinopharm or the immunocompromised over 3 years of age, it will be the sixth.
According to the specialists consulted by this means, the so-called “second generation vaccines”, designed to combat omicron and its sublineages, could be ready in December of this year, although this information was not confirmed by the national health authorities. From the arrival of these sera, indicate the infectologiststhe frequency with which a person should be inoculated could start to spread out until it leads to a annual scheme, similar to that of the flu vaccine. Although, they clarify, that will depend on the evolution of the pandemic.
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According to official data, in Argentina the current situation of SARS-CoV-2 variants It is characterized by an exclusive circulation of the omicron. Regarding the lineages, between SE25 and SE27 it is observed that BA.4 and BA.5 are on the rise while the proportion of BA.2 decreases. As for infections, they have been growing since the beginning of July. On June 26, 25,680 were reported for the week throughout the country and last Sunday, double: 52,745. They were also 26% more than the previous week and almost 1000 more than those recorded at the peak of the fourth wave, the last week of May: 51,778.
Tomas Garcilazo, 30 years old, was inoculated against the coronavirus three times. The first two were from Synopharm and the third, one Pfizer. He lives in the Capital and a few weeks ago he received the notification to apply a reinforcement. However, he postpones it because he considers that “three vaccines are enough” and affirms that he is not planning to get vaccinated every four months, as the authorities propose. “I have no idea about infectology, but it seems like a lot to inoculate myself every four months. It would be good to know what projection there is regarding that, since there are no definitions, it gives the feeling that one should be vaccinated three times a year for life and I do not know who is going to maintain that regimen, except, perhaps, the elderly, ” Garcilazo argues.
Eduardo López, infectious disease doctor and head of the Department of Medicine at the Ricardo Gutiérrez Children’s Hospital, proposes starting from the back to the front: “In the first place, it should be noted that there is still a lot of work to be done so that more people just give themselves the first booster, which is very important to have some degree of protection. At this time less than half of the population applied it. On the other hand, a second reinforcement is indicated. That sounds good to me. There is a study done in Israel, in which they applied four vaccines to a good part of the population, and it was seen that the second booster plays an important role in the acute phase of the virus because, above all, it deepens cellular immunity”, he details.
Leda Guzzi, member of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases (SADI), describes that the antibodies that are produced both by natural infection and by vaccines tend to fall over time and around three or four months after infection or vaccination, the values drop significantly. He points out that boosters provide the necessary stimulus for antibodies to be produced again and are at high levels. In addition, in line with López, he says that they also generate a new stimulus for cellular immunity, which is the longest lasting and is the one that provides the main protection against severe forms of Covid-19hospitalization and mortality.
As for the second generation vaccines and the possibility of imagining what the future of the immunization campaign will be like, López maintained that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) manufacturers have been asked to develop antigens focused on omicron and its sublineages. As López was able to learn, the approval of these vaccines would be quick because with respect to the current ones, only the genetic information of the protein S. “It is likely that by the end of the year those vaccines will be close to being approved. Once that happens and the population is inoculated with these vaccines, we could begin to vaccinate ourselves between longer periods, as with the flu, ”says the specialist.
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Daniela Hozbor, group director at the VacSal Laboratory of the National University of La Plata and principal investigator at Conicetargues that the problem of having vaccines designed for the original variant of wuhan it can be solved, in the short term, with the reinforcements, as is being done now, but he agreed that they will soon be replaced by others designed to respond to the new situation of the disease.
“There are a lot of developments going on. Pfizer and modern they are the main ones. they are already done clinical trials in which, instead of the genetic material of the Wuhan virus, that of omicron was used. Those labs have informally released the results and they were very good. Now these vaccines have to be authorized by the health authorities. There are also developments of more comprehensive vaccines that, in addition, contemplate other coronaviruses that also cause respiratory conditions in humans. But what happens with the future of the vaccination campaign is still uncertain“, Explain Hozbor.
gucci He also notes that it is not yet clear how the campaign will proceed. He warned that there are many developments of pan-genotypic vaccines, that is, they work against various variants, but there are also intranasal vaccines, which are more efficient in preventing infection. For all this, he indicates, it will be necessary to analyze, depending on the available resources and the different age groups, what will be the best immunization strategy.