Andrew Pollard (55-year-old from Kent in the UK) is director of the Vaccine Group of the institution that spearheaded the quest to win the race against Covid-19.
He is convinced that the AstraZeneca vaccine will be the protagonist in the coming years, despite the very rare cases of thrombosis found in young women under the age of 50 and an “amateur” communication from the company that did not help him.
However, Pollard is sure that in many parts of the world the war on the virus has just begun and that group immunity, in the presence of many variants, is a complicated chimera to achieve.
The scientist answered some questions during a European press conference.
There is much debate as to whether changing the vaccine in the second dose is just as safe?
“All the vaccines we are using in Europe give an immune system response against the needle-shaped protein of the Coronavirus. There is no doubt that good immunity is generated in all cases. What is not yet known is which is the best combination. Which vaccine is preferable to inject first. And we are working on this. The second aspect to consider is the tolerance level. Some results show that, at least among adults, the vaccine mix causes a greater reaction in the two days following the injection. We don’t know why, but patients feel a little worse after the second dose if there has been a combination of drugs. “
Isn’t it then the right time to decide on these mixes?
“It would be appropriate to have more feedback. I believe that within a month we will be able to have more data and therefore more certain answers ”.
Germany has announced that, from June, it will revoke the priority list of the population. Anyone who has booked AstraZeneca can opt out and offer it to someone else. Is it a right health decision?
“It’s not a dangerous decision, but it leads us to the original question: what are we trying to achieve with vaccination programs? People end up in hospitals and this puts a strain on our public health systems. We have seen this in our respective countries. If it didn’t, there would be no pandemic. And the only way to stop this vicious circle is to focus on the adult population, the over 50s and the most vulnerable from a health point of view. From an individual point of view, the patient should accept the vaccine that is offered to him, so that he remains protected. From the point of view of the population, the priority groups must be the first, to recover our life, our economy, in short, normality ”.
Can the patient choose whether he prefers to receive a second dose of AstraZeneca over the Pfizer alternative?
“Each country has to regulate itself. Here in the UK we have chosen to constantly communicate with the public. As in other European countries, the supply of vaccines is limited and we favor the administration of two doses of the same drug. But in our official guidelines it is confirmed that, in the absence of supply, a patient can also have a second one of a different vaccine ”.
Is anything new known about the links between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the rare cases of blood clots in some patients?
“Right now there is a huge effort on the part of regulators and public health agencies to understand the reason for these rare events that we are still able to treat.”
At the moment the right decision is to use alternative drugs for the younger population ”.
What do you think of Joe Biden’s proposal to temporarily free up vaccine patents?
“It’s a logical idea. By sharing intellectual property, you can have more manufacturing facilities around the world, increase production capacity, and save more lives. The problem is the huge commercial interests that make the goal difficult to achieve. As well as the strong political differences between the different countries. The vaccine manufacturing process is also very complex and takes anywhere from six months to a year. It is not a chemical product, but biological, very difficult to make. Many manufacturers will have to throw away millions of doses first because they will not have reached the optimal size. This is why problems initially arose in Europe with the offer. Not because the effort was not made, but because it is really difficult to produce large-scale doses. So, if the patent solution started rolling out today, it wouldn’t solve the current problem. This month alone, around one million people around the world will die from the Coronavirus.
Will we get the famous group immunity?
“If we were faced with a virus that does not mutate, it would be easy to mathematically calculate how long it would take to obtain it. In the case of measles, 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated for other viruses, 80% is enough. With the variants of this virus it is practically impossible.
Are we defeating this virus?
“We are making great strides. If you look at the individual countries individually, you see that the battle is slowly winning. But, from a global perspective, the war has just begun. It is still a very worrying situation. In Europe you may feel like you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but in Nepal or parts of India it seems like something that will never end. This is why we must abandon the nationalistic view and think that we are part of a globally intercommunicating population. The reality for everyone is that the sooner people are vaccinated, the sooner the pandemic will end ”.
And this is the only irrefutable truth.