Amid fear of third wave of COVID-19 hitting India soon, WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan on Monday (November 15) said that the coronavirus cases are expected to rise across the globe and the vaccination of the vulnerable population has led to ‘uncoupling between infections and deaths.’
Talking to CNBC-TV18, Dr Swaminathan said, “Many countries in Western Europe is seeing a surge in infections, some increase in hospitalisation due to a number of reasons… but not a significant increase in deaths. So, an uncoupling between infections and deaths, largely because the vulnerable groups have been almost entirely vaccinated.”
According to Dr Swaminathan, double dose of vaccine would suffice for at least a year or possibly longer. “The new evidence that is coming out seems to suggest that vaccine-derived immunity will stay for a long time, even if the level of antibodies in the blood starts declining… But for the majority of healthy adults, a course of vaccination should be good protection for at least a year, possibly, possibly longer.”
On the question of booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the WHO Chief Scientist said that this is an interesting concept but more data are required to reach at a final conclusion.
“It is a very interesting concept and the question of heterologous boosters, or what is called mix and match… But this data needs to be generated, we cannot come to conclusions without seeing the data,” she added.
Two weeks after the WHO granted emergency use approval to Covaxin, Dr Swaminathan defended the approval process of the vaccine adopted by the global health body. “The time taken for EUL from the submission of full data set has ranged from 45 days to 165 days and Covaxin came in at about 90 days. It has not been the vaccine that took the longest but we have to respect these independent scientific and technical processes,” she said.
