Will The New Corona Virus Vaccine Help The Elderly?

Will the new corona virus vaccine help the elderly?

More than sixty types of corona virus vaccines are currently being developed by drug development laboratories worldwide. The vaccine is being developed to benefit everyone, but it may be less effective for patients and the elderly, who are most at risk. This is no different for other disease vaccines currently in use, but there are tricks that can be used to improve protection in their case as well.

Coronavirus Pandemic

They are working with steam around the world to produce an effective vaccine against the emergency SARS-CoV-2 virus as soon as possible. According to a WHO summary published in early April, there are 62 such vaccine candidates, two of whom are already in Phase I clinical trials, meaning they are being tested for the first time in healthy volunteers. However, even in these cases, at least two phases remain until they are placed on the market until the final result. But will the vaccine be just as good for everyone?

We have written before that vaccines do not affect everyone equally. Several have expressed concerns about whether the vaccines now being developed will be effective in the most vulnerable groups of the Covid-19 epidemic.

What can people over the age of 65-70, suffering from chronic diseases, expect, how long should they refrain from social contact, avoid their loved ones?

One Year Minimum

It is certain that emergency measures to avoid infecting them will not be resolved soon. It is not known when the virus will disappear - now it seems not seasonal - and vaccine development is a lengthy process. Although European Commission President Ursula vonder Leyen said in March that the vaccine could be on the market before the autumn, the epidemiological authorities had already indicated that this could realistically happen in a year and a half. Later, Von der Leyen himself retreated, and talked about how the elderly might need to be segregated throughout the year. The European Medicines Agency recently wrote that vaccination against the new coronavirus could become widely available in a year at the earliest. However, the question will still be alive: how effective will it be for the most vulnerable groups in society, especially in the way that certain vaccines provide less protection in old age.

Before we get into that, let’s look at the general picture first. Tamás Ferenci, associate professor of the Research Center for Physiological Regulations at the University of Óbuda, told hvg.hu

widely used, registered vaccines are good for almost everyone.

For individuals, there are two main questions: how safe and how effective vaccination is. When it comes to safety, the "contraindications" to a particular vaccine should be investigated. Vaccinations typically do not cause a problem in 98 to 99 percent of people, but the remaining 1 to 2 percent should be treated with caution or not vaccinated at all.

Test

Experience has shown that vaccines containing live pathogens can be used more narrowly because they cannot be given in rare and severe immunological diseases (such as congenital immunodeficiency or certain cancers). In them, the attenuated pathogen can also cause disease. Such vaccination is not recommended for pregnant women either.

They are also trying this type of vaccine against the coronavirus, but it is at such an early stage that nothing can be said about its safety. They are also vaccinated with a killed pathogen - most of them are also working on such a development against the new virus - with a lower risk. But this is not the case, for example, for those who have previously had a very severe allergic reaction to a vaccine or one of its components.

The elderly are preferred in some respects

Efficacy is also exciting: in this case, the question is whether vaccination provides the same level of protection for everyone.

The answer is no.

It depends on many things: it can be a genetic cause, or diseases that weaken the immune system, or diseases for which immunosuppressive drugs must be taken, and old age. However, Tamás Ferenci reassures:

this variability is minimal for most widely used vaccines.

He added that certain vaccines are more likely to develop weaker protection in the old age. Immunologist András Falus, a university professor and a regular member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, says that the previous vaccinations have been designed to elicit a good immune response against a new infection in all ages, be it viruses or bacteria. He also added that

juveniles respond better than older ones, even if they are healthy.

Older people have a different advantage: they have often undergone various (active or accidental) immunizations, and

they have a repertoire with which they can respond well to known infections.

He does not consider age differences to be significant, he says, based on genetic differences, the difference in the immune response may be much greater.

Vaccine Test

A range of new vaccination technologies

The extent of the discrepancy, whether age-based or genetic, cannot be assessed for vaccines developed for a coronavirus epidemic. It is also difficult to find an analogy, as in many cases they experiment with new technology, says Ferenci.

However, a great deal of research has been done on the benefits of current vaccines for the elderly. The United States authorities for Disease Control, for example védőoltásnál flu  found.

even if the vaccine is less effective, the elderly are less likely to need medical attention or hospitalized, some of them will not catch the disease.

With Hepatitis A and B vaccines, just over a third of vaccinated seniors (American researchers over 54 years of age) gained protection, but booster vaccines improved the statistics much better.

Francis says that in addition to the repeated vaccinations on it is possible to increase a vaccine's effectiveness that for older people - live kórokozós - injection into multiple pathogen put (which were rather mixed results in practice), or some, the onset of immune response-promoting material enriched specifically for developed for the age group. According to Ferenc, such a purpose may also be in the development of coronavirus vaccines.

Sixty percent grafting / protection may be enough

For those who have problems with the safety or effectiveness of vaccination, it can help if a large part of society gains protection - by vaccination or by passing the disease - and the epidemic stops. This is called community or flock immunity : if there are enough protected people, an epidemic cannot break out even though not everyone is protected, because even if someone becomes infected, there is a good chance no one will pass it on. This, of course, requires knowing how much of society needs protection to achieve this, and as a result, how many people will need to be vaccinated.

According to Tamás Ferenci, epidemiological models are used for this, taking into account several factors:

·     how many others a patient can pass on the pathogen to (i.e., how contagious it is);

·         what proportion of the population is protected;

·      what proportion of those who have doubts about the efficacy or safety of the vaccine, ie do not develop protection despite the vaccination or have not been vaccinated due to an existing disease,

·         how many vaccines are there.

To the best of our knowledge, a coronavirus patient can infect 2-3 others, so 60 percent of the population needs to be protected to stop the virus from spreading and prevent a self-sustaining epidemic from breaking out even if we don’t take other restrictive measures, Ferenci said. This is not to say that 60 percent of people should be vaccinated, as by the time they get the vaccine, some of them will go through the disease and hopefully gain immunity.

If only a limited number of vaccines are available, the researcher says it is clear that those most at risk and critical for the spread of the disease, in this case the elderly, the chronically ill, doctors, nurses, should be vaccinated first, in terms of safety and efficacy. keeping.