The vaccine against Covid-19 can become anual as long as the available immuzings have its platforms updated for the new variants of concern nowadays, among them are the Delta and Omicron, affirmed scientists from China, Chile and Brazil during the second day of the CoronaVac Symposium, which happened this Wednesday (9), from 08 AM to 11 AM. The online event is gratuitous.
For the head of the Microbiology Department from the Biomedical Science Institute of São Paulo (ICB-USP), Edison Durigon, the annual vaccination against Covid-19 may occur in the future “Since the Coronavirus changes often and we get to know a new variant different from the previous one”, he affirmed.
“What will be the future of the vaccination is to maintain an annual vaccination, but we need to change the strains. We can’t have the same vaccines with the Wuhan strain, with delta and omicron out there, they are very different from the original strain. We have the protection, but it's not 100% and we need to defy the variant that is circulating during the season. We need to include the new variants because it will change from time to time”, said the microbiologist.
The doctor in microbiology and immunology of the Medicine School from the Pontifical Catholical University from Chile, Alexis Kalergis, accentuates the necessity of the actualization of the vaccines against Covid-19 that are already available even before discussing the necessity of more doses in the future.
“The decisions must be taken based on evidence and we have the technology to answer this question. We have the virus circulating with various mutations and these variants of concern with an elevated number of T cells. Maybe it will be something we shall have. The vaccines must be updated to cover these variants of concern”, he said.
For the researcher Zhijie An, from the Control and Prevention Center of Diseases from China, what will be decisive in the need of maintaining annual doses will be evolution of coronavirus, similar to what happens with the influenza vaccines.
“If we will need to change the vaccine every year for a new dose will depend on the virus. It may become like an influenza virus, but it is a different scenario. It is not a booster vaccine, but a sazonal one, for new strains. We don’t see this sazonal influenza vaccine as a boosting, but a new one that changed. But if the mutation it’s not that high, I don’t believe we will need to keep repeating the booster vaccine”, said the epidemiologist.
