Is half a dose enough to generate protection against the coronavirus?

An unprecedented experiment launched in Brazil could solve one of the main questions around two-dose vaccines against the coronavirus. Does it serve half a dose? Does it generate antibodies? The neighbors of the municipality of Viana began to participate this Sunday in a large vaccination study to test the effectiveness of half-doses of AstraZeneca, one of the vaccines on which Argentina is also betting.

This process is part of a study to determine and the half-dose of this vaccine generates the same antibodies as the full dose, as reported to the channel World one of the leaders of the study, José Geraldo Mill, research director at the Cassiano Antonio Moraes University Hospital.

In Viana, in the state of Espírito Santo, north of Rio de Janeiro, it is planned to carry out a mass vaccination of 35,000 people between 18 and 49 years, which represents the entire population of this city, of nearly 80,000 inhabitants, which is not part of the priority groups to receive the vaccine.

Only until saturday some 20,000 residents had voluntarily registered of Viana to participate in the research.

According to Mill, it is expected that sufficient information is obtained within six months to determine if the half-dose of vaccine is safe to fight against the coronavirus.

Trial participants will receive the booster dose in twelve weeks, the same timeframe defined by AstraZeneca for the administration of the two doses of the vaccine.

According to project officials, the application of half doses has already been used to conduct similar studies against yellow fever.

Brazil is the second country, after the United States, with the highest number of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic (nearly half a million) and the third in number of people infected, after the United States and India.

With information from the EFE

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