Photographer: Mark Kauzlarich / Bloomberg
Photographer: Mark Kauzlarich / Bloomberg
Coronavirus vaccines had just started in December when more than 1,000 staff members joined The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles volunteered for a comprehensive study. The goal: determines how immune responses to the jab can differ.
Susan Cheng, research leader, had a clear pattern in the data ‘devised for us’ by last month. Those recovering from Covid-19 reacted so strongly to their first shot that the results matched that of never-infected colleagues receiving both shots. The implication was clear. If you have had Covid, you may need only one of the two doses you recommend Pfizer en Modern.
“We did not expect it to pop out like a smoke gun,” Cheng said. the prescribing of natural medicine. In fact, if you have already had the virus, your immune response to one vaccine is likely to be even better than a person who has never been infected after two, according to Italian research fits in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The issue of giving a single dose to people who have had Covid has become all the more urgent as safety concerns about Johnson & Johnson and Vaccinations by AstraZeneca. The implications at a time of global supply are striking: giving previously infected people just one mRNA vaccine shot could release more than 110 million doses worldwide, according to a calculation by University of Maryland School of Medicine immunologist Mohammad Sajadi and colleagues.
‘Remember’ Covid
Sajadi is co-author one of the recent studies that fits in with a recent spate of findings that all point in the same direction: the immune system in people who have had Covid “remembers” the virus, thus serving as a first vaccine as a powerful booster for existing defenses. “The data is very clear,” Sajadi said. “Every study has shown that you get a very clear and strong memory response.”
Healthcare workers give doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at an arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California.
Photographer: Bing Guan / Bloomberg
Since February, several European countries – including France, Spain, Italy and Germany – have adopted policies that give Covid survivors only one dose of two-dose vaccines.
In Israel, a world leader in coronavirus vaccinations, health authorities initially withheld vaccines from recovering Covid patients, but in February recommended that they be given one shot. New research there suggests that the booster vaccine provides protection against newer variants that have emerged in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.
“We think our study supports the recommendation to administer one vaccine dose to individuals recovered to protect against the original and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern,” said Michal Mandelboim, head of Israel’s national center for influenza and respiratory viruses, said in a statement. email. A study in “Science” found that vaccinations in Covid survivors increased immunity to variants on a large scale.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends two vaccine doses for people who have had Covid, but the growing evidence that one vaccine may be enough is being discussed. According to the Bloomberg vaccine, the US administered enough doses for 31% of the population, while Israel gave enough for 57%. Tracker.
Data required
In a blog post, Francis Collins, director of the health institute Francis Collins, raised the possibility that a single dose to survivors ‘could help expand the vaccine supply and get more people vaccinated earlier.’
“But any serious consideration of this option will require more data,” he warned in February.
Since then, a study afterwards another reinforced the idea for single-vaccine-for-survivors, although some skeptics have pointed out that it is logistically simpler to give just two doses to everyone than to find out who only needs one.
In the US, vaccine stocks are relatively plentiful, Sajadi said. But ‘for other countries, especially places that are struggling to get vaccinated, this is still an important question. And this is also an important question in general, because you do not just want to give someone a medical intervention that they do not need. ‘
If a patient who had Covid had asked Sajadi at this point if he needed a second vaccine, he would say that it would make sense to skip it if nothing in their medical history indicates problems with immune responses.
Cheng at Cedars-Sinai said she would still ask the CDC leadership to ask for two vaccines, even for people who had Covid. However, the data suggests that one dose may be enough, she said – and it could also apply to other types of people: ‘I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg to find out who it is. ”