SUBSCRIBERS EXCLUSIVE
The new version also protects against Ómicron and reduces infections. Other countries in the region advanced to have it, but in Argentina there are still no news.
The will of the population to vaccinate against Covid was reactivated in the last two weeks from the increasingly marked rise in cases. However, there are people who doubt whether to do it now and wonder: Should the fifth dose be given with a vaccine designed last year or would it be better to wait for the new formula to be available in Argentina?
Any expert consulted will answer that if they have elapsed four months From the application of the previous dose it is advisable to take the vaccine that is available in the country. And the one that is available, for now, is still the same one that fed the stock since 2021, made for the virus originating in Wuhan.
This advice basically responds to the fact that said vaccine continues to serve to counteract serious illness and death. The new vaccines, called bivalents, are designed to create tailored antibodies not only against that ancestral virus, but also against the latest variant hitherto recognized: omicron.
That means the bivalent vaccine has greater efficiencyaccording to the studies published by the laboratories, to stop infectionsa power that the “old” vaccines have seen diminished while the virus was mutating.
On the other hand, those who decide to wait for the arrival of the new generation of vaccines will make a bet with uncertain outcome. Common sense and the available information invite us to assume that today a vaccine against the Wuhan version in hand is worth more than another against the specificity of Omicron flying.
The truth is that no date yet so that the bivalents are available in Argentina, as confirmed to Clarion Sources from the National Ministry of Health. Two months ago, the version circulated that the arrival of these new doses would take place before the end of the year, but that horizon seems to have clouded over.
have already passed almost four months since the UK became the first country to approve the bivalent Covid vaccine on August 15. And more than three since the United States FDA did the same, on August 31. In South America several countries have advanced or intend to do so in the short term.
Chile began applying Pfizer’s bivalent vaccines on October 11. Y Moderna announced that its bivalent vaccines will be available in Uruguay for the 2023 vaccination campaign.
The health agency Anvisa authorized on November 22 in Brazil the emergency use of two bivalent vaccines against Covid, produced by Pfizer. As announced, it will be used as a booster dose in people over 12 years of age, three months after the last application.
In Ecuador, the Adioum Group, through the pharmaceutical company Medicamenta Ecuatoriana, is working to obtain Moderna’s bivalent vaccine. In PeruAs of next year, the bivalent dose against Covid will be applied, according to the Ministry of Health of that country.
In the Argentina there are still distributed and not applied in the provinces some 8 million vaccines that continue to be useful despite new developments that may exceed the effectiveness of the original formula.
Clarion also consulted the laboratories Pfizer and Moderna, which manufacture the bivalent vaccine, to corroborate the status of the conversation with Argentina. From Pfizer they limited themselves to saying that “the current agreement enables to receive adapted versions of the vaccines.” At the close of this note, Moderna had not responded.
There is in this whole process, at the same time, a certain degree of uncertainty linked to the speed with which the virus has been transforming, a characteristic that only seems to have stabilized in 2022, with the omicron supremacy. But what would happen if a new variant emerged -such as in the last hours alerted the WHO What could happen – and in a short time become predominant?
In other words, what would be the use of the bivalent vaccine specialized in Omicron in the event that this version of Covid was replaced in the short term by another variant hitherto unknown?
It is for this reason that the greatest insistence of the experts has to do with reinforcing vaccination in order to prevent complications of eventual infectiongiven that the other leg of vaccination coverage, linked to the desired “herd immunity”, in this unstable and unpredictable epidemiological context, seems for now to be a utopia.
The increase in those vaccinated with the fifth dose in recent days partly reflects a response to that logic. While until last Tuesday there were hardly 208 thousand injections applied and the account hardly grew, from then until this Sunday, thanks to the skyrocketing number of Covid cases, the balance climbed to 331,500.
Although the authorization of the third booster in the country for people over 50 years of age had begun at the end of July (for those who had received Sinopharm in the first scheme), 60 percent of the fifth doses administered so far in the country took place in the last five dayswith an average of 24,600 every 24 hours.
Priority continues to be given to those over 50 years of age -now previously inoculated with any brand- and those who are immunosuppressed, although as long as there is availability of doses they can also advance with the third booster everyone over 18 years old. In any case, there is still a significant deficit in the coverage of the first and second reinforcement.
that only the 53 percent of the population has the third dose and worse still, the 13 percent have the fourth, it accounts for the immunological vulnerability of Argentines in the face of cases that do not stop increasing, with increasingly pronounced jumps with each passing week.
PS