The sixth update of the vaccination plan against covid, which the department led by Carolina Darias published this Wednesday after Tuesday’s agreement by the Health Commission, cuts off the debate on the voluntary option for the second dose, as they have raised several communities. «It must be remembered once again that the choice of vaccine cannot be established by individual choices“But it must be based on effectiveness and indication for different population groups,” the text points out.

«It also does not seem appropriate at the current time to offer the Vaxzevria vaccine to people under 60 years of age who voluntarily want to be vaccinated.. Not only may the proposal contradict the ethical principles on which the strategy itself is based, but also, if there is still not enough information available to make the most appropriate decision, the value of informed consent as a guarantee of autonomous decision, it would be very debatable,” the report states.

«The vaccine to be administered to people under 60 years of age who were vaccinated with the first dose will be decided soon –the text continues–, as well as the moment in which this second dose will be received, as the scientific evidence, the EMA evaluations and in communication with other EU countries are updated and expanded.

After ruling out voluntary inoculation, the options that the Vaccine Presentation continues to study For those two million essential workers (mainly teachers, police, military and firefighters) who received the first jab, there are now three: leave them without the second inoculation and trust in the 70% immunity offered by a single dose; administering to everyone, without it being voluntary, the second AstraZeneca jab; or inject them with a second dose of one of the two messenger RNA vaccines already available on the market, Pifzer’s or even Moderna’s, if their scarce supply increases.

The problem is that, for the moment, specialists from the Public Health Commission do not have sufficient data on the effectiveness or contraindications of a ‘cocktail’ of vaccines from different commercial brands and technologies (AstraZeneca’s is based on the adenovirus). . That’s why, The Carlos III Institute launched an express study this week to evaluate the effects of a second dose with Pfizer prophylaxis.

In this time trial investigation, 600 people under 60 years old as a sample of those two million essential workers to whom Health has decided to deny the second dose, ignoring for the first time in this health crisis the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which set, as the only lower time limit, that of 18 years.

The test should be completed by early Maysince it is from that moment on that the first inoculated, after the mandatory 12 weeks, should be pricked with the second dose.

Thus, according to the new update approved by Health, the AstraZeneca vaccine, for the moment, will continue to have an excessively strict use for the current demand for prophylaxis. According to this document, after finishing the few “essential workers” who are over 60 with the second dose, it will only be used, as is currently done, for the so-called group 8 “people between 60 and 65 years of age.” (born between 1956 and 1961, both inclusive)» who are being inoculated starting with those born in 1956 «progressing in the year of birth according to the availability of doses».