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There are people who remain unvaccinated against Covid-19 because they fear the side effects of the vaccine. In this edition of Escala en París, Patricia Minaya Flores, Peruvian doctor and head of the Public Health evaluation service and vaccine evaluation at the French High Health Authority, clears up some doubts about the vaccine validation processes, its safety and risks and about what drugs are on the market to treat the disease.
The organization for which Patricia Minaya Flores works evaluates which vaccines that are on the market fit into the existing vaccine strategy and which population will receive the maximum benefit from this vaccination. “Even before the vaccines against Covid-19 were developed, the High Authority began to see what that priority population had to be and what vaccination strategy was going to be followed,” explains the doctor in Public Health and Clinical Research.
“The most important thing in evaluating a vaccine is to see if the benefits are greater than the risks, which are never zero, zero risk does not exist. For the Covid-19 vaccine, the risks are extremely low,” adds Minaya Flores.
Cases of myocarditis, pericarditis and hyperplasia
When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were licensed, the French High Health Authority was not aware of side effects such as myocarditis, pericarditis, or hyperplasia.
“When manufacturers carry out studies, they are carried out by a few thousand people, sometimes 40,000, but since the risks of myocarditis or pericarditis are so low, at that time it had not been seen,” he acknowledges, but also points out that, although the risk there is a risk of suffering it with the vaccine, “an unvaccinated individual is at greater risk of developing myocarditis than a vaccinated individual.”
More time is needed to know how often we are going to have to vaccinate
In general, we receive vaccines when we are small, in two doses, and then after 10 years the reinforcement is done to guarantee protection. This is the case, for example, with Tetanus. There are other vaccines, such as the flu, which are applied once a year. But it is the first time that we are facing a virus, Sars-Cov2, against which we have to be vaccinated every three months. It seems more like a treatment than a vaccine.
“We are in a moment of reflection on the part of the scientific community because until now no vaccine is placed every three months. What we need is time to investigate the duration of the antibody response thanks to the boosters to decide what is the scheme that we are going to propose in the long term, ”she clarifies.
Patricia Minaya Flores assures that there has been no type of pressure in France from the laboratories to administer the third dose to the population. “There has been an incredible collaboration between all the actors to be able to manage the pandemic effectively, including the pharmaceutical industry,” defends the scientist.
Faced with the Omicron variant, very contagious, but apparently less aggressive than the previous ones, we wonder what strategy should be adopted. If not, it is better to continue vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable people with chronic diseases and for other citizens to stop getting vaccinated and be able to circulate without restrictions. “It is wrong to think like this because 1% of many people is still a lot of people, so the people who are not vaccinated, not all of them are going to develop severe forms, but there is a percentage that is, and that percentage in absolute numbers is enough to come to occupy beds in hospitals that impede the proper functioning of the health system. When we have weapons like the vaccine to prevent serious forms, I don’t understand why we shouldn’t use them, ”he says.
Are Ivermectin and Azithromycin effective in treating Covid-19 disease?
“The good news is that we have drugs that act specifically against the action of the virus because from the beginning the treatments were symptomatic: the objective was to prevent the patient from becoming decompensated and they acted on the symptoms, now we already have Paxlovid on the market, which it is an antiviral that will prevent the virus from replicating quickly in our body and causing damage,” explains Patricia Minaya Flores, although this medication is currently intended for people at high risk and has not yet been generalized.
The doctor is very critical of medications such as Ivermectin, an antiparasite, and Azithormycin, an antibiotic; remedies that some doctors in France have been prescribing since the start of the pandemic.
“There are personal opinions from all sides, but we at the High Health Authority, like all the independent and scientific institutions in the world, have the same position. No authority has given a favorable evaluation for these two drugs. On the contrary, it is extremely dangerous to use antibiotics and antiparasitics in cases where they are not needed because antibioresistance is created, ”says the doctor who does not want to venture to say whether or not we are at the end of the pandemic. “Someone who gives you an answer is someone who is playing roulette,” she concludes.
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