Dr. Marc Siegel, a medical contributor to Fox News, said the news that a “dual protection” vaccine is being formulated in the UK is very promising and its arrival is “important news”.
Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, said in “America’s Newsroom” that “double protection” means that, if found potent and successful, the vaccine will produce neutralizing antibodies and provide second protection by increasing T-Cellular immunity.
“[N]Not only does the vaccine produce neutralizing antibodies, and that’s what neutralizing is, exactly what it sounds like; antibodies that attack and kill a spike protein in the virus that kills the virus: the second layer of protection is called T-cell immunity, the other immune cell that we have to chase viruses and that’s the cell that really destroys them, ” said. .
“It is designed to attack viruses, so the Oxford University study is published today in Lancet [is] looking at 1,000 patients, volunteers and early trials, but that’s a huge number of early trials. “
He said the key to the testing phase is whether the vaccine is potent against the virus itself.
“If you had the virus in your system, does the vaccine protect you from infection? That remains to be seen.”
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Siegel added that, if successful, the vaccine studied at Oxford could be ready by the end of 2020, and that a US program called Operation Warp Speed would accelerate the mass production of the vaccine to an amount of 300 million doses, if this vaccine is proven effective
“So manufacturing is not going to slow down the process here, which is what has never been done before in human history. Science has been at a very prodigious rate, but they go to hot spots around the world: Brazil, the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa: go to areas where there is a virus and test it right now with 30,000 people, “he said.
“Those tests are underway. Those tests should be completed in late fall. This vaccine works, we should know before the end of the year.”
