By: Nour Hany
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread all over the world, people are rushing to take the vaccine, which only exists in limited numbers for the time being. The fact that the whole world needs the vaccine has led some countries to delay the second vaccine dose in order to give it to other people who are not yet vaccinated. There is no doubt that the intention is well, but is it the right thing to do?
Scientists are concerned that delaying the second dose of the vaccine may lead to more dangerous mutations of the virus, as people will only develop partial immunity to the virus. Ramón Lorenzo-Redondo, a virologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, thinks that delaying the second dose of the vaccine is a gamble, as it is not clear yet if the first dose will work as expected. He added that officials “should not gamble [their] best tools” to fight the pandemic”. “We do not want to fuel [potential viral evolution] by doing suboptimal immunization of the population, he explained.
Delaying the second vaccine dose is the same as “not finishing a full complement of antibiotic; it is possible that low numbers of neutralizing antibodies triggered by only one dose may only partially fight an infection. That might provide more time for variants of the virus with immune-dodging mutations to arise and thrive and be transmitted to other people”.
On the other hand, Sarah Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, have a completely different opinion; she believes that a growing number of people getting the first dose of the vaccine is way better than giving fewer people the two doses without delaying. She says that even partial immunity is better than having no immunity to the virus at all, and that a single dose “will almost certainly lower the prevalence of infection”.
The matter needs a lot of study to decide whether or not it is better to delay the second vaccine dose, as the whole vaccine matter is still new and unpredictable even for scientists themselves.
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