"We have an urgent need for universal vaccines against coronaviruses": said immunologist Anthony Fauci, during the lectio magistralis held in video link with the Sapienza University of Rome on the occasion of the award ceremony of the honorary research doctorate in Advances in infectious diseases, microbiology, legal medicine and public health sciences. Citing an article he recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci recalled that universal vaccines against coronaviruses are needed because in the future "we will certainly see new variants, not only with SarsCoV2, but perhaps with other coronaviruses".
At the moment for immunologist, US President Joe Biden's pandemic advisor, 'the booster with current Covid vaccines offers good protection against Omicron, so no new specific vaccines for this variant are needed at the moment.' Citing data from South Africa, Fauci showed that with the arrival of Omicron the effectiveness of vaccines against the infection dropped from 80% to 33%, while protection against hospitalization went from 93% to 70%. "Fortunately, however, we know that with the booster dose the neutralizing antibodies against Omicron increase by 38 times, so it is important to do it," said Fauci. Data from Great Britain also shows that the booster dose reduced the risk of hospitalization by more than 80%
"It is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that we will succeed in eradicating Covid": "we must try to control it at such a low level that it does not stop our society, like the flu and other respiratory diseases we live with today. Probably. we are going in that direction, but now in the United States with one million cases a day, 145 thousand hospitalized, we are not there yet ".
Immunologist Anthony Fauci said this, underlining that "Italy has done better than the United States in vaccinating people", covering 81% of the population with at least one dose of vaccine, compared to 74% achieved in the US.
For this "I want to congratulate the Italians".