MANILA — Health experts said that for now, they would not recommend giving second booster shots to other priority groups, particularly, economic front-liners and people with comorbidities.
During the televised Laging Handa public briefing, Dr. Edsel Salvaña, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health, said the protection provided by the first booster dose remains sufficient to combat COVID-19 and its variants.
“We have good evidence that the first booster [shot] is really effective. In fact, the incremental benefit from the second dose to the first booster is very big. But the incremental benefit between the first booster and the second booster is much smaller compared to that between [the] second dose and the first booster,” Salvaña said.
According to him, although antibodies decline several months after inoculation, vaccines have also been proven to produce T-cells which manufacture antibodies when faced with the virus that causes COVID-19. “It’s not only the antibody which we are talking about here, but also what we call T-cells which act as soldiers of our bodies and really bring longer-lasting protection [because] they recognize the [COVID-19] inside [human] cells,” he added.
Just wait
The government recently started administering second booster shots to immunocompromised persons, regardless of which priority sector they belong to, followed by health workers and the elderly.
Salvaña said that while the government was studying the decision of American health authorities to administer second booster doses to those aged 50 years and above, it was also considering just waiting for reformulated vaccines.
“We know that there are new reformulated vaccines that are already in the pipeline. So, maybe this would be more effective, if we just wait for them, rather than pushing our old vaccines that evidence show [are] not very strong particularly for those population with really higher survival rates, and that they actually do react much better to the vaccines compared to people who are immunocompromised or older,” he added.
Based on science
For pediatric infectious diseases expert Dr. Anna Ong-Lim, who is also a member of the technical advisory group of the Department of Health (DOH), the current data supporting the administration of second booster shots was limited only to vulnerable groups.
Priority should always be given to those at a higher risk of contracting severe diseases and death due to COVID-19, she said, adding that this has been the strategy since the government started vaccinating people in March last year.
“So, we follow that process because we want to base these recommendations on science. And currently, evidence to support benefits for boosters are for those identified which are the immunocompromised, seniors and health-care workers,” Lim said.
She added that the DOH would review any new data on the expansion of recipients once it becomes available. (Jerome Aning ©Philippine Daily Inquirer 2022)
