Mixing Covid vaccines produces as much or more antibodies as using the same shot as a booster, according to preliminary results of a widely awaited U.S. government-sponsored trial. Today, FDA advisers begin meeting to debate whether people who got the Covid-19 vaccines made by Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson should receive booster shots. Sam Fazelli of Bloomberg Intelligence discusses it all. (Source: Bloomberg)
we got some data yesterday that seems to suggest that actually mixing and matching is a good thing that if you’ve had AstraZeneca or a J and J getting a Pfizer shot has a really big impact yeah so the the study yesterday complements what we’ve already seen from the UK the UK had two separate studies that reported focused on the AstraZeneca shot with uh followed by fire shot because those are the ones that we are using mostly here and that was only two doses so one dose of Astra one dose of Pfizer Pfizer Pfizer Pfizer Astra and the best was a dose of Astra followed by Pfizer now what we got yesterday from the US was but what about moderna what about Johnson and Johnson remember it’s one dose so of course what ended up being the case is that when you look at antibody levels if you give an mRNA vaccine a modern or a Pfizer to a person who had one dose of jnj they get much better antibody levels than if you just give them a second shot of jnj now timelines you need to wait maybe a bit longer for jnj yeah whatever the answer is this seems better but Sam if I’m not mistaken what you’re talking about is a traditional kind of vaccine and then your mRNA as that booster what happens if you already got an mRNA how do you mix and match yeah so for that study they did have a group of people who had either the moderna or the Pfizer or the Johnson Johnson vaccine in the two groups who had the moderna or the Pfizer and whatever vaccine they gave them they got a pretty good boost obviously moderna because it’s three times the dose that of Pfizer gives a much bigger boost but in fact what I think is when you look at the totality of the data remember vaccines also need to be safe nobody wants a vaccine if they get knocked out for two days every time that they take it and the fisa biontech was the safest of the lot in that study in terms of what is happening next we’re trying to figure out what happens with kids in the United States Alex is very interested in finding out what happens with five to twelves I’ve just had my 12 year old uh given a shot of the Pfizer now in the UK it’s quite a small dose that they’re giving and the rollout seems uh to be a little disorganized let’s be polite about it at the moment nevertheless how quickly should we expect an impact in terms of the cases in schools as a result of starting this process because at the moment it seems there’s a lot of covert in the UK but it’s mainly centered within that age group yeah I think if you really want to see an effect in terms of infections then you’re going to get into the 50 60 70 range again with this uh vaccine you can’t just have a one dose in 20 of the kids and everything starts looking great because it’s not enough the virus will find the other 80 the virus will find the other 30 if you’ve got up to 70. but then of course you get that multiplier effect where you get the so-called herd immunity and you don’t get um you don’t get transmission that easily so Sam based on that how do you think the case count for schools in the UK is going to evolve it seems like there’s no mask wearing when they’re older cases are really Rising what’s that how’s that going to play out well I mean frankly uh Alex I think what’s going to happen is that they’re either going to get the vaccine or they’re going to get infected so um so in the next few months if this carries on as it is you will see a peak again which is what happens every time you look at the the virus look at the United States everywhere is kind of calming down in terms of case counts so I think that’s exactly what will happen immunity will set in unfortunately in a lot of cases because of an infection rather than a vaccine does it matter in that age group as much we we are we’re finding ourselves in a situation where behavior is is now in the UK and elsewhere starting to get back to normal like certainly that’s just anecdotal experience of what is going on around me does it matter now that we do have these cases in this lower age group in terms of the way that this is going to progress this is the final group that’s going to get vaccinated It’s the final group it seems that that is getting covered in large numbers but actually as a tale this is something that we can manage relatively easily should we be concerned therefore as we watch the numbers on a daily basis that they are still elevated or should we be basically saying you know what this is in an age group where largely it doesn’t matter so guy if you’re thinking about hospitalizations or death which is uh what I’m trying to avoid both of those things but yeah no of course but if you think about just those very awful outcomes then obviously younger folks don’t don’t get as a bad response to the virus the problem is you have long covet you have the fact that they get knocked out of school for 10 days and everybody around them so there is a sociological School whatever you want educational everything aspect to this so the better the protected they are the less disruption to everything around them and risk of long covet is important
