Government plans to continue vaccinating adolescents without comorbidities with Moderna doses

The leaf is short and the Delta variant is hiding. Three and a half million teenage doseFor now, they are the stock currently available to Argentina. They come from the Moderna laboratory, donated by the United States.

The priority is already 920 thousand adolescents with co-morbidities, but in Argentina there are 3.8 million adolescents aged 12 to 17, a target for which this vaccine is approved. The idea of ​​the government is not to wait too long to immunize them.

Of the total American donations, 1,840,000 doses they have already been reserved for minors of these ages suffering from an underlying disease. Next week, they will be the first miners in Argentina to receive an injection against Covid.

The Government distributed half of these necessary vaccines in the provinces, that is to say only the first doses. The second doses are untouchable. And the balance – the complement of these urgent devices is eliminated – is almost 1.7 million doses.

The question that had arisen in recent days was what was going to be done with this stock. Some experts have omitted the possibility that it is used as second dose of Sputnik, although Moderna is only now included in the city’s vaccine combination trials.

Roberto Debbag, president of the Latin American Society of Pediatric Infectology, explained to Bugle: “The antecedent is with the AstraZeneca vector. But in an emergency like ours with the second dose of Sputnik you could opt for messenger RNA, like Moderna”

Bugle was able to confirm, however, that the government’s plan is to continue vaccinating adolescents no comorbidities. For each year, there are approximately 585,000 young people between these ages, but if you subtract those with co-morbidities, there are 480,000 left.

That is to say that with 1.7 million doses Full regimens could be applied to almost all adolescents between 16 and 17 years old, or a half regimen (first doses) between 14 and 17 years old.

This half-program, of course, would await the entry of new vaccine batches from Moderna or, even earlier, Pfizer. As announced, the latter would arrive in the country before the end of the year. With the two laboratories, the government has contracts for a total of 40 million doses.

The decision to continue to vaccinate boys without comorbidity, although not yet officially informed, has been communicated by Minister Carla Vizzotti during a meeting with experts from the Argentine Pediatric Society (SAP) last Wednesday, before announcing that part of these vaccines would already be used to vaccinate minors with risk factors.

The immediate extension of vaccination to all adolescents also coincides with the fact that, unlike in the City, several provinces have already allowed the free registration to vaccinate them – always between 12 and 17 years old – even if they have no comorbidities.

The official objective would be to reduce the potency of the “Supercontagators”, and even more so at a time when the Delta variant will begin to circulate in common, much more transmissible and – according to the latest data in the United States – also more aggressive.

These adolescents are precisely the population with a great social mobility, many of whom are asymptomatic and with a great ability to transmit the virus to vulnerable people.

What will happen then with the peremptory second dose that are rare for the elderly? There would also be a story that closed the loop as to why Moderna’s vaccines would not be used for this purpose. Sources with access to the vaccine combination trials said Bugle that the results of this experiment, although they are not yet conclusive, “They are fine”.

If it is confirmed that the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines can be used as second doses of Sputnik, the government has finally paved the way for the allocation of Messenger RNA to minors, since they are the only ones activated in the West for this age group. In China only, Sinovac and Sinopharm are approved for use in children 3 to 17 years old.

In addition, it is estimated that in the coming days the first batches of the Cansino vaccine, which is most similar to the second component of Sputnik V, as it is made from adenovirus 5.

This vaccine, also of Chinese origin, would be included in the combined trial when it became available. Although it is estimated that if the results with AstraZeneca and Sinopharm are positive – as everything indicates – the likelihood of this happening with Cansino would be even higher.

PS