{"id":186212,"date":"2021-02-23T00:33:15","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T21:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/is-it-possible-to-mix-and-match-covid-19-vaccines\/"},"modified":"2021-02-23T00:33:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T21:33:15","slug":"is-it-possible-to-mix-and-match-covid-19-vaccines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/is-it-possible-to-mix-and-match-covid-19-vaccines\/","title":{"rendered":"#Is it possible to mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Is it possible to mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines?<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Vaxx Populi: Some scientists think using different types of vaccines might confer more protection against variants of concern. A study could provide the evidence.\n <\/div>\n
\n \u201cI think we\u2019re having a global science<\/a> lesson,\u201d says Dr. Alan Bernstein, CEO of CIFAR, a Toronto-based global research organization. The pandemic has \u201cmade science all of a sudden not some esoteric, abstract thing, but has made it important to all of our lives on a daily basis\u2026.[including] the really complicated intricacies of our immune system.\u201d<\/p>\n

As vaccine shortages continue\u2014even as rollouts increase in size and scale\u2014scientists are asking whether it\u2019s possible to mix-and-match the two-dose COVID-19 vaccines that are app<\/a>roved or near approval in Canada, in essence starting the vaccination process with one approved vaccine and ending with another.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0More COVID vaccines are coming to Canada. Who will get them first?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bernstein, <\/b>who is a member of Canada\u2019s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force<\/a>, is in favour, in theory, and is pushing for research, perhaps a study that includes Canadian volunteers, to see if the theory works in real life. For him, one reason for such a mix-and-match strategy is that, with the new variants of concern spreading in Canada, \u201cwe have to be a little more sophisticated\u201d in our vaccination approach, and that may mean \u201cactivating a few different branches of our immune system\u201d through a heterologous prime boost (or mix-and-match) rather than a homologous prime boost (using the same vaccine for both doses or, as Bernstein says, two similar vaccines, such as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which both use mRNA technology<\/a> and which he thinks are \u201ckinda twin brothers\u201d that look a lot alike).<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0AstraZeneca is likely the next vaccine coming to Canada. What do we know about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThink of vaccination as presenting our immune system with a red flag\u2014here is something you should be on the lookout for,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd so if you go with the mRNA vaccine first, you\u2019re going to activate one branch of our immune system.\u201d (We have three different branches.) Bernstein suggests thinking of this first vaccine as our \u201cair force.\u201d Then, he says, you introduce one of the viral vector vaccines, such as the ones by AstraZeneca\/Oxford or Johnson & Johnson\/Janssen a couple of weeks later, and, it tells the immune system: \u201c \u2018You saw this guy before, but I\u2019m going to present him in a different format,\u2019 \u201d says Bernstein. \u201cAnd so it\u2019s going to activate a different branch of our immune system, think of it as our navy. And so now you have the air force and the navy activated and so you\u2019ve got a double threat against this incoming virus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least on paper, it\u2019s worth trying the trial to see what happens to our immune system,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0COVID-19 in Canada: How our battle against the second wave is going<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Such efforts are already underway. On Feb. 4, the British government announced the world\u2019s first \u201cCOVID-19 alternating dose vaccine study,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0involving 800 volunteers and testing eight different combinations of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines, including all the variations of which goes first and second, and also having the doses 28 days apart and 12 weeks apart (the latter is the current British standard, as it focuses on getting as many first doses into arms as possible).<\/p>\n

The British study should only take a couple of months, Bernstein explains, as its end point is \u201cto measure the immune response against the virus.\u201d So researchers will need to wait a few weeks after the second dose before looking for antibodies and immunity and then analyzing the results.<\/p>\n

Britain isn\u2019t waiting for the results of the study. While acknowledging that \u201cthere is no evidence on the interchangeability of the COVID-19 vaccines,\u201d the government issued last-resort guidance in January allowing a mix-and-match vaccine strategy<\/a> for someone who has been issued a first dose and who goes \u201cfor vaccination at a site where the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product to complete the schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Can two people who\u2019ve been vaccinated hug each other?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But Bernstein says that a mix-and-match strategy should not be adopted here without a full successful trial and Health Canada approval. \u201cWe risk losing the confidence that we\u2019ve built up with Canadians over a long time now if we start willy-nilly [saying,] \u2018Lets try this, or let\u2019s try that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Like Bernstein, other scientists think Britain is gambling with public confidence by going ahead with the policy without results from a completed study. \u201cNone of this is being data driven right now,\u201d Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times<\/i><\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re kind of in this Wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, Canada will be awash in vaccines, as more vaccines are approved and promised shipments of millions of doses arrive. While the impetus to use a mix-and-match strategy to deal with localized shortages may subside, the threat posed by variants of concern will still exist. So the British mix-and-match study may only be one part of examining new ways to keep the world safe from this novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n

As Canada rolls out the country\u2019s most complex vaccination project to date,\u00a0<\/em>Maclean\u2019s\u00a0presents\u00a0<\/em>Vaxx Populi, an ongoing series<\/a> in which Patricia Treble tackles the most pressing questions related to the new COVID-19 vaccines. Send us a question you\u2019d like answered at\u00a0vaccines@macleans.ca.\u00a0If you have specific questions about your own health, we recommend consulting a family doctor or the local public health authority in your area.<\/em>
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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Is it possible to mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines?” Vaxx Populi: Some scientists think using different types of vaccines might confer more protection against variants of concern. A study could provide the evidence. \u201cI think we\u2019re having a global science lesson,\u201d says Dr. Alan Bernstein, CEO of CIFAR, a Toronto-based global research organization. The pandemic has \u201cmade…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/NursePreparingSyringe-750x422.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[67892,82947,67806,84966],"class_list":["post-186212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus-in-canada","tag-covid-vaccines","tag-editors-picks","tag-vaxx-populi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}