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A monstrous mutation. Norwegian virologists fear this may happen with the UK’s vaccination strategy, writes VG.
Rather than giving two doses to some, the British choose to give one dose to many. Swedish experts Matti Sällberg and Ali Mirazimi give their opinion on the strategy.
– There is a risk of doing this, it is a possibility, says Matti Sällberg.
The UK has calculated the figures and concluded that the protection after vaccine dose 1 is approximately 90 percent for the Pfizer vaccine and 70 percent for the AstraZeneca vaccine. Therefore, they have now changed the course of the vaccine and decided that it is more useful to protect the population with one dose than to withhold and to offer two doses to a few.
The second dose of the vaccine is said to be taken after around 20 days, but the UK decided on December 30 to allow up to three months between the two doses.
But today we don’t know how the body reacts to a little protection.
– What protection looks like after one dose has not been evaluated, you have no idea what it looks like after three months without dose two, says Matti Sällberg, professor and vaccine researcher at the Karolinska Institutet.
Photo: Jacob King / AP
Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first in the UK to receive the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine.
The Norwegian immunologist Fridtjof Lund-Johansen is investigating, among other things, antibodies against covid-19. He believes that an incomplete vaccination will be like stopping antibiotics too soon, writes VG.
– In the worst case, it is conceivable that if you only give one dose, vaccine resistant viruses could appear. Then we run the risk that the virus mutates and changes so that other vaccinated people are no longer protected, he tells the newspaper.
VG writes that this monstrous mutation that could occur can have consequences, even in Norway.
But Matti Sällberg doubts that a new mutation will emerge and that the whole world will be affected by the British strategy.
– I can’t believe that. Rather, the risk is that they will obtain semi-powerful protection, lose control of the pandemic and need to vaccinate their entire population.
Photo: CAROLINA BYRMO
Matti Sällberg.
Matti Sällberg: “The British take a risk”
He says the British are “taking chances” because they don’t know if the strategy works.
– You just don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what side effects it has and what complications it may be due to.
The US FDA also advises against waiting with dose two of the vaccine.
– Different countries do it differently. Here in Sweden, we take care of ourselves, says Sällberg.
Virus researcher Ali Mirazimi also sees the risks that the British may receive poorer protection.
– Then you have to see how the situation in the UK looks like, they have a much greater social extension than ours. It is a way to reduce the spread as quickly as possible. But it is not certain that they will get the protection they hope for.
Do you think it is possible that the UK strategy could lead to a vaccine resistant mutation?
– There is some risk that the virus will spread below the surface and then one or two strange variants may appear.
– You can say this: theoretically, the answer is yes. But the probability of that happening is very, very small. It is a new virus and you must take the safe rather than the insecure here, says Ali Mirazimi.
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