The large-scale promotion of new crown vaccination can prevent the emergence of mutant strains
accumulative reports have over 220 million doses of new crown virus vaccines
□ Our reporter Hou Jianbin
At present, all parts of our country are actively promoting the new coronavirus vaccination work.
As of April 24, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps had reported a total of 220.309 million doses of new coronavirus vaccine.
At a press conference held by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council a few days ago, Mi Feng, spokesperson for the National Health Commission and Deputy Director of the Publicity Department, pointed out that the number of new confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia worldwide has been rising for 8 consecutive weeks, and the virus continues to appear new. Variant.
This reminder: While insisting on external defense input and internal defense rebound, we should speed up the promotion of new crown virus vaccination, and continue to do personal protection.
Recently, some people reported that it was difficult to make an appointment for the second dose.
When the state allocates and supplies vaccines to provinces, it has fully considered the demand for the second dose as scheduled.
Mi Feng emphasized: “All localities must do a good job of precise deployment to ensure that the second dose of vaccination is completed within 8 weeks to avoid the situation where the injection is given but not given. The National Health Commission’s stationed working groups will also strengthen this. Supervise."
The vaccination rate of medical staff exceeds 80%
"The current national vaccination work is progressing smoothly." Cui Gang, the second-level inspector of the CDC of the National Health Commission, said that the current new crown virus vaccination is mainly carried out around two key points: one is key areas; the other is key populations.
"Prioritize ensuring that port cities, border areas, large and medium-sized cities with high epidemic risk, and key areas where cluster epidemics have occurred in the past, promote vaccination work." Cui Gang said that relevant areas are currently actively coordinating and refining vaccination arrangements to improve Vaccine turnover and vaccination efficiency, and organize vaccination work in a safe and orderly manner.
In the key population, it mainly includes cold chain practitioners, medical and health personnel, personnel of government agencies, enterprises and institutions, college students and faculty, service personnel of large-scale supermarkets, and related personnel of transportation, logistics, and welfare institutions that guarantee the operation of the society. crowd.
Cui Gang revealed that in order to do a good job in inoculating related key industries and key populations, the competent authorities of health, education, civil affairs, transportation, railways, civil aviation, housing construction, cultural tourism, market supervision, state-owned assets and other industries involved inoculation of this industry The work has been clearly deployed, and strive to realize the "should be exhausted" of the new coronavirus vaccine on schedule.
"Medical personnel are fighting on the front line of epidemic prevention and control and medical treatment. Relatively speaking, the risk of infection is relatively high." said Li Dachuan, deputy director of the Medical Administration and Medical Administration Bureau of the National Health Commission. Since last year, key populations have been vaccinated. At work, medical personnel are regarded as one of the key groups, and vaccinations are arranged first.
So far, the vaccination rate of medical staff has exceeded 80%.
According to reports, the National Health Commission requires localities to carry out vaccination work in accordance with the principle of highlighting the key points and advancing in stages according to the designated hospitals first and non-designated hospitals later, from the key departments of the hospital to the general departments.
In accordance with the unified requirements of the National Health Commission, all localities have also actively created conditions, organized and coordinated to facilitate the vaccination of medical personnel, and at the same time avoid the phenomenon of "one size fits all".
In addition, the local authorities strictly adhere to the first edition of the technical guidelines for COVID-19 vaccination to ensure the safe conduct of vaccination work.
Vaccines will not promote the emergence of mutant strains
Some people think that since the effectiveness of the vaccine is not 100%, is it not worth fighting?
In response, Wang Huaqing, chief expert of the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's immunization program, responded that the vaccine is approved for use only if its effectiveness reaches a certain standard.
In fact, the role of vaccines is mainly to prevent diseases, but also to prevent severe illness and death.
Judging from the current results, whether it is clinical trials or post-marketing observations, the effect of preventing severe illness is better.
"To prevent a disease, block the spread or reduce the intensity of the epidemic, vaccination is a better measure." Wang Huaqing said that the new crown vaccine is started in key areas and key populations. The purpose is to allow the population to build an immune barrier through orderly vaccination. Reduce the intensity of virus transmission, and ultimately achieve the purpose of blocking the epidemic and blocking the transmission.
"If everyone thinks that the vaccines currently being vaccinated are not 100%, we may not be able to build up our immune barrier if we do not vaccinate them, and we will not be able to achieve herd immunity." This disease will become popular, and it may spread.
"You must know that the emergence of epidemics and transmissions and the measures to control them are very costly." Wang Huaqing said that if more people are vaccinated, the immune barrier can be established as soon as possible. Even if there is a sporadic virus, it will not form a large scale. The epidemic can stop the spread of the disease.
Regarding a theory that has emerged abroad, it is believed that the large-scale promotion of new crown vaccination may promote the accelerated mutation of the virus.
Shao Yiming, a member of the Vaccine R&D Expert Team of the Scientific Research Group, responded that this statement lacked scientific basis.
"Virus mutation is an eternal theme, especially mRNA viruses. The basis of its mutation is that the virus will continue to replicate." Shao Yiming said that as an acute infectious disease such as new coronary pneumonia, the entire course of the disease is only a few weeks. If you want to continue to replicate, you must start from infection. People cycle, and continue to be transmitted to the susceptible. If it is not popular, there will be no chance to copy, and then it will not spread.
Shao Yiming emphasized that the vaccine can block the spread of the virus. The virus cannot replicate when it does not spread and will not produce more mutant strains. In this case, the vaccine definitely plays a positive role.
Moreover, through the widespread promotion of vaccines, time can be bought to deal with future virus mutations, enabling companies and R&D institutions to study a new generation of vaccines against mutant strains.
Shao Yiming believes that in this sense, vaccines can definitely prevent the emergence of mutant strains.
my country's vaccine research and development department is in the first legion
Regarding the relevant progress of vaccine research and development in my country, Shao Yiming said that the entire research and development of the new crown vaccine in my country is in the First International Corps, which not only provides vaccine support for the Chinese people, but also for the people of more than 50 other countries.
According to Shao Yiming, my country has deployed 5 technical routes in the early stage of the epidemic, of which 3 technical routes are at the forefront, including 3 inactivated vaccines and 1 viral vector vaccine, all of which have been approved by the State Food and Drug Administration for conditional marketing. It plays an important role in current vaccination.
The other is a recombinant protein vaccine, which has also been approved for emergency use.
Shao Yiming said that my country has also laid out several technical routes. More than a dozen vaccines have entered clinical research, including the technical route of attenuated influenza vaccine carriers. The vaccine is undergoing phase II clinical trials, showing good safety and immunogen. Sex; mRNA vaccines, DNA nucleic acid vaccines, pre-clinical studies have shown very good prospects, and now phase II clinical trials are also underway.
However, like the problems encountered by the previous vaccines, due to the very good control of the epidemic situation in my country, Phase III clinical trials cannot be carried out in China, and the Phase III clinical trial sites can only be located outside the country.
This may face "double challenges": one is that the epidemic is now increasing internationally, and the other is that many countries have to set up placebo groups. There are certain ethical issues. Everyone wants to be vaccinated and does not want to enter the placebo group. .
Shao Yiming believes that in order to accelerate the development of vaccines with other technical routes, some innovations may be required, such as whether similar vaccines can be evaluated through the immunization alternative endpoint and speed up their launch on the market.
Of course, real-world studies can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines.