Vaccine scientists call for rethinking COVID-19 vaccination goals amid resistant variants

Prominent vaccine scientists have called for thinking again the goals of COVID-19 vaccination programmed and have noted that herd immunity through vaccination is unlikely to achieve because of the emergence of variants like in South Africa. As per reports, the remarks by the leading scientists came after Oxford and AstraZeneca noted that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate will not protect people against mild to moderate covid illness that is caused by the South African variant. However, all vaccines have been found to provide immunisation against the most severe disease, hospitalisation and death. 

As per The Guardian report, Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand who has been the chief investigator on a number of COVID-19 vaccine trials in South Africa including the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, has said that it was now time to rethink the goals of mass immunisation from the highly-infectious disease caused by the coronavirus. 

Following a study involving over 2,000 participants in South Africa that included two vaccines, from Novavax and Janssen that was found to have around 60% efficacy, Madhi said, “These findings recalibrate thinking about how to approach the pandemic virus and shift the focus from the goal of herd immunity against transmission to the protection of all at-risk individuals in the population against severe disease.” Even Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine have said that the coronavirus variant affects the efficacy of their COVID-19 vaccines. However, it was only on the basis of lab studies.

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UK minister calls for maintaining confidence

On February 7, South Africa announced the suspension of the start of AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccinations after the study revealed that its jab failed to prevent mild to moderate cases of the disease. Meanwhile, UK’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi, said that the British public should maintain confidence in the Oxford jab. While writing for Telegraph, he said the vaccines being deployed “appear to work well against the Covid-19 variants currently dominant in the UK”.

“In terms of other variants, not in the UK, we need to be aware that even where a vaccine has reduced efficacy in preventing infection there may still be good efficacy against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death,” he wrote further. Meanwhile, Prof Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial stressed the value of vaccines in reducing the mortality rate of COVID-19. He reportedly said, "This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected, but, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease."

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