The company Moderna last Wednesday saddened the public because the protection of its vaccine against COVID-19 in the human body weakens over time. After the latest research of his drug, the head of the American biotech company, Stephen Hoge, sadly admitted to investors that this fall and the upcoming winter, the weakened immune system of most people would not be able to oppose the virus with proper protection. The presence of the Moderna vaccine in the body will also not help in many cases. Concerning his company's vaccine, Hoge put it this way: "For the first six months after the injection, the drug perfectly protects you from the coronavirus, but our company cannot guarantee the same protection for a year or more."
According to the head of the pharmaceutical company, if we do not try to solve this problem, then in the coming months, we will face at least another 600 thousand new cases of COVID-19. Probably, this time it will also not do without hospitalizations.
A certain dissonance arose after this statement because until recently, Hoge loudly declared that his company's drug perfectly protects a person, moreover, much longer than a similar version from Pfizer and BioNTech. After conducting large phase III studies, both vaccines were described as extremely effective in preventing COVID-19 disease.
And what has changed now? It turns out that the latest study showed that the Moderna vaccine does not give a vaccinated person long-term immunity. Those who received the injection more than 13 months ago are at risk of contracting this virus again today.
The company conducted a study on the vaccine's effectiveness with the participation of more than 14 thousand volunteers who were vaccinated in the period from July to October 2020. As a result, 162 cases were detected among those vaccinated last year and 88 cases among those who received both doses later. Nineteen cases of them were considered serious. By the way, this study took place from July to August, when the Delta strain was actively spreading.
As scientific experts explain, the reason is a higher dose of informational RNA (mRNA) and a slightly longer interval between the first and second doses.
The head of Moderna, Stephen Hoge, sees only one solution to this problem – introducing a booster dose of the vaccine. The company's management assures that another dose will help increase neutralizing antibodies in patients' blood to higher levels than after the second dose. It is predicted that the third dose of mRNA-1273 can significantly increase the immunity of a vaccinated person for most of the next year.
Well, the third mandatory dose of Moderna is just around the corner. And it's time for us to recall no less loud news about the same Moderna and about cases of myocarditis or inflammatory disease of the heart muscle, which in rare cases can develop in a person vaccinated with this drug. Complications of myocarditis are dangerous because they can lead to heart failure or sudden cardiac arrest. Here is such an unpleasant fact about the vaccine of an American biotech company revealed by scientists in the spring of this year. But in fairness, it is worth noting that the drug from Moderna and the vaccine from Pfizer, which is actively sold worldwide, are blamed for such a complication.
According to the study results, scientists led by Samantha Lane from the Center for the Study of Drug Safety (Great Britain) recorded about 3 thousand cases of myocarditis and pericarditis after the Pfizer vaccine. Moreover, about 1 thousand – after the Moderna vaccine. By the way, 68-78% of patients with such a reaction were men, while most of them were people under the age of 30.
And although inflammation of the heart muscle and adjacent tissues in most cases did not lead to serious consequences and passed quite quickly without visible consequences for the patient's health, Lane and her colleagues still do not exclude the development of more severe side effects. According to the expert group, the identified complications must be taken into account during primary and repeated vaccinations of young people in all countries where the use of vaccinations based on matrix RNA is practiced.
That is why many scientists and vaccine experts in the United States do not agree that booster doses are necessary for the population. Although health officials in the United States and some other countries, including vaccine manufacturers, are actively pushing the idea of the need for a third dose.
We remain to wait for the outcome of these disputes, which will pass on Friday to a group of independent expert consultants of the US Food and Drug Administration.
