Single Dose Vaccines Leave You Vulnerable to Variants

 

Our government's failure to source Covid vaccines may leave Canadians in for a grim surprise. Most Canadians who have been vaccinated are told they'll have to wait for four months to receive the booster. The idea is that'll hold you in the meantime.

A UK study finds this single-dose regime may leave Canadians vulnerable, not so much to Covid Classic, but to the steadily emerging Covid variants. And that's for the Cadillac of vaccines, Pfizer's.

Researchers in Britain have found that one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provides insufficient protection against new variants of the COVID-19 virus and urged public health officials to be vigilant about ensuring that people receive a second injection.

“We’re looking rather vulnerable to variants after one dose,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London who co-authored the research.

There's an important exception - those who have received one dose after having had an asymptomatic or mild bout of Covid-19. If you've already had Covid and you get the vaccine it seems the jab operates as a booster. Pretty neat - if you've already had and recovered from Covid. For the rest of us, it's a different situation.

However, the group of volunteers who had not been infected showed a much weaker immune response to the variants after one dose. The study showed that their level of neutralizing antibodies was 11- to 25-fold lower against the B. 1.1.7 variant compared with the original version of the virus, “resulting in the majority of individuals falling below the protective threshold.”

The research team said their findings also likely apply to other variants in circulation, such as the P.1, first detected and Brazil, and the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants, first associated with India.

“One dose in terms of all of our measurable immune parameters of [the Pfizer vaccine] really does look very, very feeble and all the more so against variants,” he said. “And yet whatever the level of immunity that it’s induced, it’s certainly been enough to have had some impact. But it’s really very, very weak compared to two doses. My message from that would be hang on in there for your second dose.”

Meanwhile, after months spent waiting for provincial and federal support, Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics is giving up on Canada. The company was hoping to set up a mRNA vaccine lab to produce vaccines for the Canadian market.

Brad Sorenson, the CEO of Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics, told CBC News he's had enough of the "runaround" from federal and provincial governments and he's working with the company's board of directors to move its operations overseas to focus on developing a vaccine for people in the southern hemisphere.

"I'm moving on, that's where I'm at now. I've prostrated myself at the altar of government in Canada for a year and I've received nothing for it. I'm tired of begging and pleading," Sorenson said.

The move is a setback for the federal government's efforts to nurture a domestic biotechnology industry. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed how being entirely dependent on foreign sources for much-needed products like vaccines makes Canada vulnerable.

Providence, which was developing mRNA cancer vaccines before the COVID-19 crisis hit, came forward with promising data about its novel coronavirus product last March, only weeks after BioNTech and Moderna produced similarly encouraging early results for their mRNA-based vaccines.

Sorenson claimed the company's pre-clinical trial results were "equivalent or better than these big companies that are now saving the world."