Pablo Sigal
08/04/2021 11:39
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 08/04/2021 11:39
The results of the combination of vaccines, whose trials were carried out in the country during the last month, will allow millions of people who today have the first dose of the Sputnik V vaccine to
receive another
in replacement of the second component.
The idea is that it is
optional
.
It should be remembered that the Russian vaccine
is not approved
by the World Health Organization or by the main health organizations in the world: the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the FDA.
The AstraZeneca vaccine appears as an alternative to supplement the second dose.
What will happen to those who choose this recipe when they
want to travel abroad
?
The reality is that the fact that people apply as a second dose a vaccine that is approved in Europe (not in the United States) would
not allow them free transit
through that continent because the first dose received would continue to be from Sputnik.
In that sense, until there is international approval for the Russian vaccine, the scenario of the immunized would not change.
Another scenario will arise when the Sputnik vaccine
is approved
- if it is finally
approved
- by the international health authorities.
There will come a new stage for those who choose to supplement the second dose with another brand.
That is, to know what global validity will have, for example,
a possible combination
of the Russian vaccine with that of AstraZeneca or another that is offered in Argentina.
Just as vaccination is optional in our country, the Government has already said that the possibility of getting vaccinated with another brand as a second dose will also be so.
In other words, although
the immune response may be satisfactory
for those interested in inoculating, they must submit to the bureaucratic consequences at the global level that this new scenario may open.
Minister Vizzotti presents this Wednesday the results of the combination of vaccines.
From the World Health Organization, for now, they limit themselves to saying that trials of the so-called heterologous vaccination
are ongoing
in different parts of the world.
And that people should not choose on their own which vaccine to apply, but follow government instructions.
If a person today is vaccinated with AstraZeneca as the first dose and with Pfizer or Moderna as the second,
they have no problems
moving freely through Europe because they are two vaccines approved in that continent.
Sputnik, on the other hand, is currently only approved in Hungary.
Similarly, if Sputnik ends up being approved internationally,
the same criteria
should prevail for those who from now on combine it with another brand in the absence of the second component of the Russian inoculant.
What should prevail, in principle, is
individual and social health
within the country's borders, beyond the impact that this situation may have immediately and during the ongoing pandemic on the possibility of freely circulating around the world.
Obviously the "health passport" is a key issue to attend to, but the urgency today continues being - with all the obstacles that Argentina is going through -
how to deal
with the imminent community circulation of the Delta variant that has been ravaging other latitudes.
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