As I see it | Covid-19: question of booster jabs needs real-world data on Chinese vaccines
- Most vaccines are believed to protect against severe cases, but a booster shot could be the way to counter mutations
- However, vaccines’ success in stopping transmission remains in doubt, and using shots as booster doses may deny them to those yet to be vaccinated at all
By allocating resources for a third dose, inequality of access to the shots would widen, given that many developing countries are still short of doses for the unvaccinated.
But booster shots for the new variants are certainly on the agenda for governments and pharmaceutical companies. The latter are also familiar with the exercise.
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SCMP Explains: What’s in a Covid-19 vaccine?
Each year, they select strains of seasonal flu based on patient data and conduct laboratory tests to check their vaccines’ ability to neutralise them.
However, Sars-CoV-2 is a new virus and before its emergence there had been no human vaccines for coronaviruses. Real-world and laboratory data are important to decide on the right strategy, because Sars-CoV-2, like other coronaviruses, mutates easily.