FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

Over 700 people volunteer for vaccine cocktail study, but only 90 to be chosen

Over 700 people volunteer for vaccine cocktail study, but only 90 to be chosen

More than 700 volunteers responded within six hours to participate in a Chulalongkorn University research project for vaccination against Covid-19 by switching between doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines

The volunteers were responding to an appeal from Dr Yong Poovorawan, head of the university's Center of Excellence in Clinical Virology at the Faculty of Medicine.

The safety research project will study immunogenicity and alternating effects of the inactivated vaccine (Sinovac) and carrier virus (AstraZeneca).

Dr Yong said he would ask the ethics commission to do a study of only 90 people to get detailed results, which would later be used in practice, he said, and thanked all applicants.

Current wisdom advocates the use of the same Covid-19 vaccine for the first and second doses. But in some cases, where the first dose is not very effective, a different second dose is required, such as Sinovac and AstraZeneca, he said.

Two doses of different vaccines are useful in cases where vaccines are scarce, he added. When the second dose is available, different types of vaccines may be used, hence the effects of vaccine switch must be studied thoroughly before it can be used in practice, he said.

After being reviewed by the Ethics Committee, the project invited volunteers to receive the first and second doses of different vaccines.

The vaccine side-effects would be recorded and immunity would be monitored periodically to obtain academic information before being put into practice, Yong said.

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