Coronavirus: the Minister of Science affirmed that due to the new strains 'it will probably be necessary to give booster doses or change the vaccine'

06/19/2021 8:20 PM

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 06/19/2021 8:20 PM

In the midst of the second wave of coronavirus that still keeps the health system in tension, and in the face of fear of the aggressiveness of the new variants, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Roberto Salvarezza, warned this Saturday that "

probably we have to give booster doses or change vaccines

. "

"Today

there are many questions, for example, about the immunity

granted by vaccines," said Salvarezza, and in that sense he considered that it is necessary "to continue to see how antibodies and immunity evolve."

"The appearance of

new variants complicates

and therefore one has to think that it will probably be necessary to give booster doses or change the vaccine if it is not effective against a new variant," said the official in a radio interview with

AM 750

.

Asked about a report that indicates that 38% of the people who come from abroad do not comply with isolation, Salvarezza recalled that "when you arrive from abroad you know that you have to control and isolate".

Salvarezza during the presentation of the neokit against the coronavirus.

Photo: AFP

In addition, he affirmed that

"there is a lot of vigilance on the flights"

, noting that "those of the United Kingdom, Turkey and Africa have been reduced, because there are two variants, the Delta and the Beta or variant of South Africa and both are very complicated" .

Although the official clarified that "

neither of the two circulate in Argentina for now,

" he explained that the United Kingdom had 2,000 cases of the Delta variant on May 17 and today it has 11,000, in a month it multiplied by four, so the 90% of the cases are of the Indian variant. "

He also stressed that Argentina

"has the capacity to produce vaccines"

and said that in the plant in the Buenos Aires town of Garin of the mAbxience laboratory, "millions of doses" of the AstraZeneca vaccine are being produced.

Those doses began to arrive in the country in recent weeks, after their packaging in plants located in Mexico and the United States was delayed.

Salvarezza also said that the Ministry under his charge "is

financing research projects

: one is that of the University of San Martín and Conicet, which is Arvac, which is the recombinant protein; the other project, Leloir-Conicet, is of adenovirus, similar to that of the Sputnik and Oxford vaccine ".

"There are four other projects that are being worked on to design the vaccine and be able to finish what is the animal or preclinical phase and enter phase 1 and 2 in humans," he said.

Vaccination campaign

Regarding the vaccination plan against the coronavirus, Salvarezza said that "Argentina had as a vaccinable population around 30 million people, and today we exceed

14 million people vaccinated with a single dose

, or 45%, therefore it has been met with half the population. "

"We have to wait a couple more months for Argentina to cover the 60% of its population most at risk," he said.

Regarding the cases of coronavirus in the country, the minister pointed out that "we are in a clear decline but with still important cases, so we must take extreme care so that everything that was won is not lost again."

In this sense, he said that "Brazil, which came with a plateau area, had 90,000 cases yesterday, a record, so care must be taken so that the curve continues to decline."

Regarding the role of the opposition during the pandemic, the minister said that this sector "from the beginning

tried to convey to the population that this was nothing

, that the quarantine was not important, that you had to go out and you had to burn chinstraps, and not to give importance, that it was something stronger than the flu, which is in accordance with what Patricia Bullrich has expressed ".

For Salvarezza, this represents "a sector of the opposition that opposed the health and care policies that the government was implementing."

Look also

A study affirms that it is not necessary to wait 15 days between the application of the vaccines against the coronavirus and the flu

Coronavirus in Argentina: 15,631 new cases are reported and the number of patients admitted to intensive care continues to decline