Delaying

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Anchor lead: What are the ramifications of delaying second doses of Covid-19 vaccine? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Vaccinate as many people as possible or follow protocols for those vaccines that require two doses? Lots of attention is being paid to this issue as vaccine supplies remain tight, even with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine entering the fray. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, says what’s needed is data.

Garibaldi: It’s very likely that delaying that second dose will still have that booster response from the immune system and get pretty high levels of efficacy. But it’s really going to be hard to compare that to the initial trials because there are now different variants that are circulating and so you’re not going to know is it because there are different variants that the efficacy is a little bit less or is it because of that delay. The other issue if you’ve had Covid already and recovered and you get your first dose of the vaccine it looks like those patients have as high antibody levels as people who never had Covid but got their second shot.  :30

Garibaldi says getting vaccinated with whatever vaccine is available to you is your best strategy. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.