Periodically vaccinating every inhabitant of the planet against Covid is not sustainable: says loud and clear Andrew Pollard, a professor at Oxford University who contributed to the development of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine. Interviewed by the British channel SkyNews, the expert stated that giving the whole world doses of reinforcement every four or six months is not only not possible, but probably not even necessary. “Perhaps the most vulnerable individuals will need to be vaccinated periodically, but I think it is very unlikely that we will have to set up regular vaccination campaigns aimed at anyone over the age of twelve,” he stresses.
First the first (dose). Pollard also touches on a subject often discussed, that of the very low vaccination coverage of the poorest countries: “We have not even been able to offer a dose to every African citizen”, he comments: “how could we ever get to the point of administering the fourth dose to every person on the planet? ». According to the expert, it is necessary to have further data in order to decide when, how often and if it will be necessary to vaccinate the most vulnerable – mainly the elderly and people with previous diseases.
Fourth dose: yes or no? While Pollard rejects the idea of a fourth dose for everyone, Israel has already started administering yet another dose booster to over 60s, and German health minister Karl Lauterbach said a fourth dose “will be necessary”. The US immunologist Anthony Fauci, on the other hand, is more prudent, according to whom it is still premature to talk about the fourth dose: “One of the things that we will have to keep an eye on carefully is the duration of protection given by the reinforcement dose of mRNA vaccines“, he said. Fauci said, noting that if the booster dose protects better than just two doses, a fourth dose may not be needed for a long time.
At the mercy of the ond (at) and. Once again it must be emphasized that the future is only partly in our hands: we are faced with a virus that every day (or almost) forces us to review our beliefs in the light of new variants, so we can only wait and hope that Omicron is the way out of the pandemic nightmare.