Corona dead vaccine from Valneva - manufacturer warns unvaccinated people

Created: 01/01/2022Updated: 01/01/2022, 5:26 PM

From: Tobias Utz

Many people are waiting for the dead corona vaccines.

The boss of Valneva is now making a warning to the unvaccinated.

Frankfurt - In Germany, only 71.2 percent of people are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus (as of December 31, 2021).

In the middle of the fourth wave of pandemics, new infections with Sars-CoV-2 are increasing at the same time.

Many of them affect people who have not been vaccinated, often from risk groups.

This is shown by data from the DIVI intensive care bed register.

In addition, statistics from the Robert Koch Institute show that the risk of a severe Covid-19 course is significantly higher for unvaccinated people than for vaccinated people.

One reason why some people have not yet been vaccinated against Corona * is that they are waiting for so-called dead vaccines.

These are vaccines of the traditional kind. A dead vaccine only contains killed viruses and does not multiply in the body after the vaccination, as Martina Sester, professor of immunology at Saarland University, told Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Corona dead vaccine - Valneva boss emphasizes: "I don't advise anyone to wait for our vaccine"

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research defines inactivated vaccines as follows: “Inactivated vaccines contain killed, ie no longer capable of reproducing pathogens. This also includes vaccines that only contain components or individual molecules of these pathogens. Depending on the type of production and the degree of purification, one speaks of whole virus, split or subunit vaccines. Examples are vaccines against hepatitis A (whole virus) and influenza (split and subunit vaccines). "

One such dead vaccine is Valneva's remedy.

The vaccine is currently undergoing accelerated testing by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and could therefore soon be approved in the EU *.

Despite a possible early approval of the dead corona vaccine, the boss of Valneva has now advised against waiting for it: "I do not advise anyone to wait for our vaccine," Thomas Lingelbach told the news magazine Spiegel.

This approach is simply "ethically unacceptable".

Valneva's inactivated corona vaccine arouses great expectations.

© Henrik Montgomery / TT / Imago

"Get vaccinated now," he appealed to the unvaccinated population.

In an interview, he justified this appeal by saying that it could still be weeks or months before the Valneva vaccine actually comes onto the market.

Lingelbach emphasized that he had recently received a booster vaccination with the corona vaccine * from Biontech / Pfizer *.

It is hardly surprising that the Valneva vaccine is now part of an accelerated approval process in the European Union.

The EU itself has signed a contract with Valneva for 60 million vaccine doses.

The EU also has a contract with the manufacturer Novavax, whose vaccine has now been recommended for approval by the EMA *, in this case over 100 million vaccine doses.

In many cases this vaccine has also been called a dead vaccine - wrongly. * The EU Commission now has to decide on the approval of the Novavax vaccine.

This process is considered formal.

Corona dead vaccine: EU has a contract with Valneva

As the company Novavax writes on its website, their vaccine is a protein-based vaccine candidate.

Why is the vaccine often declared as a dead vaccine?

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach * explained it on Twitter as follows: "Because so many unvaccinated people only want dead vaccine, for whatever reason, Novavax that will soon be available will be referred to as such."

A new study also examined which corona vaccines are suitable as boosters: Valneva's dead vaccine did poorly *.

(Tobias Utz)