The Technical Commission on Vaccination against Covid-19 of the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) admits that, under 60 years old, those who received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine may receive the second dose of any other brand, reports the TSF.
Quoting statements by one of the members of the technical committee, Luís Graça, TSF radio explains that this is a hypothesis that is still under study and that the DGS is still awaiting studies so that a decision can be taken.
«All vaccines use the same protein, so from the point of view of immunology, at first, it will be equivalent to the immune response induced with a vaccine of a different brand», explains Luís Graça.
Last week, the DGS began to recommend that this vaccine be given only to people over 60 years. According to TSF, about 200 thousand Portuguese, of various ages, have already been vaccinated with the first dose of this vaccine.
As Luis Graça explains, since the interval between doses of AstraZeneca vaccine is 12 weeks, the authorities have until May to see what is happening in other countries, what are the alternatives and wait for more data, especially for the work being done by Oxford University to study the vaccine's effectiveness and the safety of taking a second dose from a different brand.
The researcher also says that when the time comes when Portugal has to start giving the second dose, in May, the authorities will be more confident about the “safer and more effective strategy”.
«From the point of view of the immune system, in the second dose what is intended is to expose our body to the virus proteins that were in the first dose and all vaccines use the same protein - the spike protein -, so from the point of view of immunology, at first, it will be equivalent to the immune response induced with a vaccine of a different brand», says the specialist of the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM).
Anyway, Luís Graça says that, as studies have not evaluated this solution so far, it is safer to have results that confirm that everything behaves as expected and that the response to the second dose is equally robust.
It adds that in other countries, it has already been decided to give a second dose of another brand, regardless of the studies that the Portuguese authorities await.
“This is a safety message also for these people that we are not taking hasty action based on incomplete data, waiting for some time for more robust data”, he adds.
The newspaper Público reported on Sunday that Portugal will receive on Wednesday a first batch of 30 Janssen vaccines against Covid-19, adding that with the arrival of these single-dose drugs, the country has 1,9 million doses available to administer during the month of April.
According to data released last week, close to 580 people have been fully vaccinated against covid-19, which represents 6% of the population, of which around 300 elderly people are aged 80 or over.
According to the weekly report of the DGS, 579.069 Portuguese have already received the two doses of vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.
The report, with data as of April 4, indicated that 1.334.338 people (13% of the population) had been vaccinated with the first dose.
At the end of the week, the Task Force of the vaccination plan revealed that Portugal had reached the milestone of two million vaccines against Covid-19 administered to the population since December 27, 2020.
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