A study in the United Kingdom suggests that the Oxford-AstraZeneca/Covishield COVID-19 vaccines might offer life-long protection against the disease, DNA India reports.
It’s a development that the Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram looks favourably on, referring to it as “very good news.”
“It’s an interesting study that has recently come to light and it’s very good news for people in Trinidad and other parts of the world that have utilised AstraZeneca,” Parasram said at yesterday’s COVID-19 media briefing.
“Initially, when vaccines were being utilised and manufactured, people were saying that we’d get eight months to a year immunity. The study seems to suggest you’d get life-long immunity from AstraZeneca.”
However, he cautiously noted that it is still early and the study’s results could be impacted by SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) variants of concern, which is why he “wouldn’t like to cast that in stone.”
“But it is a very good study to take note of and it really supports the use of AstraZeneca and AstraZeneca also decreases the risk of transmission of disease—(it’s) one of the few vaccines that does that,” he said.
The CMO also referenced a study emerging from Sri Lanka, which suggests the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the Delta variant. However, he also noted that this study is yet to be peer-reviewed.
“It’s again very good news for the country because we have a large quantity of Sinopharm in Trinidad and Tobago for use and we have used AstraZeneca,” he said.
