A national agreement is set that there are no enough covid-10 vaccine doses enough for the Canadian and US population. This has now brought about a debate on how to maximize on the doses that are already there bringing about heated disagreement from all sides. With the cases and deaths on the upward rise and new variants popping from the world over from the highly transmittable SARS-CoV2, researchers are advocating for new ways to administer the vaccine. Instead of administering the dose in pairs stretched over a two week time limit, the proposal is that the dose should be administered to everyone in one batch first. That will mean that everyone should first get the first dose before getting the second dose. This idea is getting a lot of momentum.
However, critics have downplayed the call as one with unfounded results and very little information. This is because both the American companies’ Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna mRNA vaccine have shown an efficacy rate of 95% when both shots are administered but very little data on the efficacy of a single shot. The efficacy of a single shot is said to be at about 50%. However it isn’t known how long the shot will protect one. This shows how critical the second dosage really is.
Even with this information, the clarion call for a single dosage is getting louder as the US is battling almost 200,000 cases of Covid-19 per day and about 128,000 Americans in hospitals. This has led to the emergency authorization of the vaccine. The speed of the authorization was soon shadowed by the slow pace of the rollout and pop up of the new strains in several states across the USA. The researchers behind this call have said that immunizing large parts of the population will bring about reduced cases and deaths across the country while tackling the new variants at the same.
Major concerns about the delaying of the second dose are the emergence of new highly transmissible and dangerous variants of the Covid-19 in countries such as The United Kingdom and The Republic of South Africa. These strains are worrying the Canadian authorities as they may render the already established vaccines useless, let alone a single dosed population. Both Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna have said that their vaccines are up to standards with the new strains and should there be a change in the situation, research will be released to the public.
sWith that already put to rest, more and more researchers are coming out supporting the single dose idea. They say that, it’s not that they are against two doses, but they are advocating for delay of the second dose so as to cover large parts of the population against the dangerous pandemic ravaging across the country. However, until substantial amount of evidence is brought to light, the FDA will continue with its skepticism about the theory. As one physician supporting the single dose said healthcare professionals and governments are not aware of the correct way of administering the vaccine since the disease is new on our planet.
