People's Daily health client Zhang Meng
"The protection mechanism of the current vaccine is mainly humoral immunity, because the immune protection against the mutant strain produced by this type of vaccination has decreased significantly compared with the original strain, and it cannot produce a good immune barrier in the respiratory tract, blocking the weak ability to spread, and increasing the cost and difficulty of implementing the social zero-elimination policy." Therefore, the introduction of new mechanisms and high-efficiency vaccines to combat COVID-19 needs to be accelerated. Zhu Tao, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chief scientific officer of CanSino Biological Co., Ltd., suggested in the proposal of the two sessions this year.
Dr. Zhu Tao
Zhu Tao believes that the mainland has been adopting a social zero prevention and control strategy, but also achieved remarkable results, so most of the population has not been exposed to the new crown virus, there is no so-called "natural immunity", the current mainland new crown vaccine vaccination rate has exceeded 87%, so the main way for the population to obtain immunization level is vaccination, so the follow-up strengthening of immunization also needs to be completed through vaccines. So we have to hurry up and strengthen it with a new generation of vaccines.
China's vaccine technology has also made rapid progress in the past two years, and now more innovative vaccine varieties have entered the clinical phase 1/2, and there are already data showing that the long-term protection of ICU severe disease after the strengthening of adenovirus vector vaccines has reached more than 98%. Improved inhalation adenovirus vector vaccines are safer than existing intramuscular vaccines and produce higher neutralizing antibodies and cellular and mucosal immune responses against Omi kerong. Other scientific research units also have a variety of innovative vaccines that show advantages over first-generation vaccines.
Zhu Tao stressed that inactivated vaccines have laid a good basic immunity in the early stage, and the safety is high, so on this basis, better improvements and enhancements are made, that is, in the third or fourth injection, or a new vaccine, such as many of the new generation vaccines for Omikron in research, or a vaccine with a higher neutralization antibody, such as mRNA vaccine or inhalation vaccine. Only in this way can there be a chance to ensure the level of immunity of the Chinese. Some studies have also shown that sequential boosting can induce higher antibody levels than homologous boosting, while being very effective in preventing severe disease.
At a press conference held by the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council held on the afternoon of February 19, Wu Liangyou, deputy director of the Disease Control Bureau of the National Health Commission, said that with the approval of the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, the National Health Commission has begun to deploy a sequential strengthening of immunization.
The so-called sequential booster immunization, that is, basic immunization and enhanced immunization use different technical routes of the new crown vaccine. At present, the mainland has approved two sequential strengthening combinations, namely "inactivation + recombinant protein" and "inactivation + adenovirus vector". There are two vaccines that can be used as sequential boosters, including the recombinant protein vaccine of Chifiron Coma and the adenovirus vector vaccine of CanSino Biologics.
Zhu Tao suggested that he hoped that the state would continue to immediately restart the approval of emergency use of vaccines through joint prevention and control and vaccine special classes, and coordinate with the CDC, the Health Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, the Ministry of Finance, the Medical Insurance Bureau and other units to organize expert demonstrations to ensure that more effective and safer vaccines can be put into use.
