I meant to link to this interview earlier but I don't think I did. It's nearly 4 weeks old now but if anyone missed it, it's well worth listening to:
Andrew Marr spoke to the Oxford Vaccine lead researcher Prof Sarah Gilbert
www.bbc.co.uk
Prof Sarah Gilbert on coronavirus vaccines and the South African variant
Andrew Marr spoke to the Oxford Vaccine lead researcher Prof Sarah Gilbert
A study that is mentioned in the interview has the potential to be really interesting and informative:
The study will examine using different approved vaccines for the two doses, as well as different intervals between doses, and is backed by £7 million of government funding.
www.nihr.ac.uk
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) supported study, referred to as the COVID-19 Heterologous Prime Boost study, or ‘Com-Cov’, will determine the effects of using a different approved vaccine for the second dose to the first dose, in addition to examining the efficacy of two different time intervals between doses.
The study will initially have eight different arms, testing eight different combinations, but more products may be added:
- Oxford/AstraZeneca and Oxford/AstraZeneca - 28 days apart
- Oxford/AstraZeneca and Oxford/AstraZeneca - 12 weeks apart - as a control group
- Pfizer/BioNTech and Pfizer/BioNTech - 28 days apart
- Pfizer/BioNTech and Pfizer/BioNTech - 12 weeks apart - as a control group
- Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech - 28 days apart
- Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech - 12 weeks apart
- Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca - 28 days apart
- Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca - 12 weeks apart
Initial results are expected to be available this Summer; this is one to watch out for!
Some people who completely lack any understanding of how the immune system works falsely claim that a heterologous booster could be dangerous or reduce efficacy, but the reality is that :
In many cases such heterologous prime-boost can be more immunogenic than homologous prime-boost.
(
source)
Of course the ill-informed individuals who make such bogus claims completely ignore the fact that people routinely get completely different influenza vaccine boosters.
For an example of the sort of nonsense that gets said, see this twitter thread:
I will provide just one quote from this, to demonstrate the sort of nonsense I am referring to, though there are plenty more where this came from:
This is frightening, is this gov deliberately trying to kill us all?!
Something I didn't realise until today is that the Sputnik V vaccine has actually been designed in a heterologous way:
This interim analysis of the phase 3 trial of Gam-COVID-Vac showed 91·6% efficacy against COVID-19 and was well tolerated in a large cohort.
www.thelancet.com
Gam-COVID-Vac is a combined vector vaccine, based on rAd type 26 (rAd26) and rAd type 5 (rAd5)—both of which carry the gene for SARS-CoV-2 full-length glycoprotein S (rAd26-S and rAd5-S). rAd26-S and rAd5-S are administered intramuscularly separately with a 21-day interval. The phase 1/2 clinical trials of the vaccine were completed in August, 2020.
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The results showed that the vaccine was well tolerated and highly immunogenic in healthy participants