Yong: Administering different types of vaccines provides high immunity
Administrating different types of Covid-19 vaccines provides high immunity against the virus and reduces the death rate, expert virologist Dr Yong Poovorawan said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
He said the method of administering two inactivated vaccine jabs before a third viral vector or mRNA shot has been accepted internationally, which can be seen from a study by Oxford University in Brazil published in The Lancet journal.
Yong said studies by Sweden and Indonesia have also proved that the method provided high immunity.
“According to a Chilean study on people who had already received two CoronaVac [Sinovac] jabs, the third CoronaVac, AstraZeneca or Pfizer jab gave immunity against symptomatic infection at the rate of 78.8 per cent, 93.2 per cent and 96.5 per cent, respectively,” he explained.
“Meanwhile, the third CoronaVac, AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs helped reduce the death rate by 86.7 per cent, 98.1 per cent and 96.8 per cent, respectively.”
Yong said a study by Chulalongkorn University’s Centre of Excellence in Clinical Virology has been published in the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MPDI) journal.
He said the centre will submit the study on immunity against the Omicron variant to the MPDI this week, which will prove that receiving a booster jab six months later provides higher immunity than three months.
“However, administrating the booster jab too late would come with risks as people could be infected with Covid-19 before receiving it,” he pointed out.
Yong also confirmed that a booster jab, especially viral vector or mRNA, provided significantly higher immunity against Omicron.
