Tum Beinort, who is developing a vaccine against the COVID-19 trial: “I am doing it for progress”

T. Beinort is an interesting personality. Just because he graduated from two of Europe’s most famous universities, Cambridge and Oxford, and works at one of the UK’s best hospitals. However, despite the intense workload, T. Beinort joined a group of doctors who advised the Lithuanian government during the new coronavirus pandemic. And now he has volunteered to test the developing vaccine against COVID-19, which has been delayed worldwide.

– You are one of the first to voluntarily agree to participate in a vaccine trial. How do you feel after the bite? Is he the only one, or will there be more procedures?

– I’m definitely not one of the first. The first phase of the study has already been carried out, hundreds of people have already received this vaccine. In the second phase of testing, I am perhaps one of the first participants in this center, but the research is not carried out in one center.

I feel good. I don’t know if I really received the study vaccine or the meningitis control vaccine. Now I will be observing for about a year. If I develop symptoms of coronavirus, I will have to report it to the study team. In addition, blood tests will be done every month to monitor the immune response. Also as a doctor, I get coronavirus tests every week.

– Did you feel no side effects after vaccination? Did not the temperature rise, nothing hurt?

– No, the side effects are very slight. Similar to what I feel after an annual flu shot that is mandatory for doctors. You feel a gentle muscle bath, perhaps a little at night, and the temperature has risen, but these are the effects you expect when you try to elicit an immune response.

– And what other procedures await, besides the antibodies and a complete blood test?

– At home, I take nasopharyngeal samples every week and send them to investigators. Initially, blood tests will be needed every month, then slightly less frequently. Here for immunological tests.

– How were you selected for this program?

– The vaccine is being developed in the UK and I have been working here directly with COVID-19 patients for the past three months, so I am in an area at high risk for coronavirus infection. The vaccine trial is now in its second third phase, and Cambridge is one of several centers participating in the trial. Health workers who are at high risk but are not infected and have negative antibodies are invited first. I participated in the study because I want to contribute to progress. It is an absolutely voluntary participation, without reward.

I participated in the study because I want to contribute to progress. It is an absolutely voluntary participation, without reward.

– Was there any doubt – to participate or not? After all, the vaccine has not been studied, there may be side effects, are you concerned about that?

– I know a lot about this vaccine because one of my friends from university has been one of its developers. Its function is to optimize the manufacturing process so that this complex enough vaccine can produce hundreds of millions or billions instead of several thousand, and I have information that the vaccine is quite safe.

This has already been demonstrated in the first phase of the study, there are unofficial data that I am aware of, I simply cannot publish because they have not yet been published. The same vaccine platform was also used to develop a vaccine against the MERS virus eight years ago and against the Ebola virus. Those vaccines are safe, so I’m not worried about the safety effect of the new vaccine, as I know enough.

Meanwhile, other vaccines being developed from COVID-19 are newer, newer methods are being used, and perhaps it would not have been as bold in those studies.

– Who would be discouraged from participating? Afraid of side effects?

– yeah If you thought the issue of vaccine safety was really very vague, you might not be in the study. At the moment, I know that this one I’m testing is safe enough, so there was no question about it.

If you thought the issue of vaccine safety was really very vague, you might not be in the study.

– How will the vaccine be tested to see if it really works? Will they try to infect you, so to speak?

– It will definitely not be the case that we will be infected. About 10,000 are now included in the study. people. Half of them will receive a control vaccine and the other half will receive a test vaccine called ChAdOx1. Because at least a part of the subjects are at high risk of infection in the area, it is expected to see a long-term clinical result, within 12 months after the study, whether part of the people are infected or not. . And how the results differ between the control group and the study vaccine group.

– When and how will you know if you have been vaccinated against COVID or placebo?

– I’ll find out only at the end of the investigation.

– Is it in a year?

– If right. The study is scheduled for twelve months, but the results will be reviewed every two weeks, and if there are clear answers sooner, the study may end earlier.

– You yourself have treated your patients with COVID-19. What disease did you see that stopped this world?

– The difficulty is that we do not have an effective treatment for this disease. Although it doesn’t cause major problems for most people, genetic factors or age make some people very, very serious. I worked exclusively with patients with COVID-19. My days were pretty monotonous because everyone had the same disease. It affects the lungs more.

Surprised by the speed at which she progressed. Within four hours of a forty-year-old man, the disease could have brought him to the point that he needed to be intubated, ventilated. Finally, you see that intubation doesn’t work either, you need to connect it to an EKMO, a machine that replaces the lungs. The person is in a completely critical condition and it is unclear if he will get sick, even though he looked almost healthy a few hours ago. Others, meanwhile, have no symptoms and are in a particularly mild form.

– Have you noticed that the disease has long-term consequences for the health of people who have recovered?

– I did not meet people who had a few months ago, but we see that pulmonary fibrosis can develop, a significant decrease in lung volume due to scar formation such as in the lungs. People are very weak. It is also surprising that COVID-19 patients experience reflex swallowing disorders in the early phase. In this way, food can enter the lungs, so a significant proportion of patients have to feed through the nose for several weeks until reflexes recover.

– Do you live, study, work in the UK, but advise the Lithuanian government why?

– I wanted to help apply the best possible medical practice in Lithuania. I have experience with research in basic and collaborative research, I can find and interpret that literature quickly, I have a team of acquaintances who know how to work well, so adaptation of scientific literature has probably proved to be a useful skill in managing the pandemic.

– You lead a science-based medicine group, and in this case, did you need a science-based policy? Has your advice been heard?

– Yes, but, you know, I wasn’t the only one to give advice. We had a whole team of medical experts. In it, we discussed all the problems, polished them, criticized each other and gave each other advice. These were not suggestions from a person. The group’s suggestions were heard.

– Removal from quarantine removes the obligation to isolate, and returnees from abroad will no longer have to be examined. When the first cases were imported, wouldn’t you re-release the reins?

– Of course, there will be import cases. And I don’t know what we will do differently in 2-3 months than what we are doing today. I can’t guess the possibilities of the second wave. Those import cases will be, that’s a fact. But here are the political decisions, not the medical ones. I cannot make recommendations on what to do.

– And would you see the point in population studies called rapid tests?

– If we did population studies with serological tests and took into account the precision of the reliability of the tests, we could see how many people have been exposed to the infection in the past. However, my unofficial suspicion is that the prevalence in Lithuania was really low and we can see the numbers after the test, which are within the test error, and we may not know the answers.

As for the PCR assays, if performed extensively, it would not show a high prevalence. The purpose of the population study should be clarified. I’m not skeptical, that research needs to be done, but you need to think not only about the academic meaning, but also about adapting it so that decision-makers can use the results.

Perhaps that disposition, not for anger, but for benevolence is very helpful in situations like a pandemic.

– Still, everyone talks about the second wave. The government plans to prepare safeguards for three months, and how could citizens prepare for it?

– I think the Lithuanian population is already prepared on the side that there is no lack of understanding about the disease. Primitive methods (hygiene, social distance, wearing masks, avoiding meeting) are already known to be necessary when the spread of disease is high.

I was very impressed by the concentration of the Lithuanian people, mutual aid and many civic initiatives. Perhaps that disposition, not for anger, but for benevolence is very helpful in situations like a pandemic. And in reality, all decisions depend on the progress of the Government and medicine until then, whether we have treatment when the vaccine comes out. Probably not yet in the fall.

– And what would you say to those who say that maybe there is no disease here, and if so, then maybe it is better to get it and get it in the summer with as many contacts as possible?

– The disease is. I won’t even argue with people who claim that the earth is flat and that 5G has caused a pandemic because it doesn’t make sense.

And if people try to get infected on purpose, the problem is that they can probably cause problems for young people, but if they get sick, they will infect others. This is morally low.