Scientific, rigorous and detailed was the conference “Importance of the application of the booster dose for COVID-19”, an academic meeting given by doctors Álvaro Idrovo and Agustín Vega, professors of the School of Medicine of the Faculty of Health.
According to the experts, access to the varied and multiple information that has been generated because of COVID.19, has created misinformation and myths regarding some topics, for example, the application of the booster dose and vaccination schedules against the disease generated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
“From a population health point of view the first dose is the most important. From then on, each booster dose follows in order of importance,” said Alvaro Javier Idrovo, PhD. in Epidemiology and professor of the Department of Public Health.
He added that boosters are important under an individualized approach, that is, there are people who require the booster dose more urgently. There are even people who do not only require a third or fourth dose, but protection outside the vaccination.
A clear example of the negative impact generated by the lack of vaccination is Africa, a continent where the Omicron variant was generated because to date, only 10% of the population has had access to vaccines.
“Vaccination is still the best way to teach the body to have an immune response, it is a way to prepare the body. Surely our children and grandchildren genetically are going to have improved pandemic tracking, because the body has memory. This translates into a series of elements called antibodies”, said Agustín Vega Vera, Specialist in Infectious Diseases, professor of the Department of Internal Medicine.
According to the expert, being exposed to the virus implies a greater risk, the vaccine contributes to the creation of a good immune response because there is a previous learning process, it is a controlled response that reduces uncertainty. However, with regard to the combination of biologics, it is considered a good decision, because it challenges the body to learn more in order to provide an immune response to the arrival of the virus in the organism. The experts concluded their intervention by emphasizing that not all humans learn in the same way, i.e., if the immune and physiological response is not adequate to learn, it is necessary to teach it to learn. The vaccine is a way in which the human being learns biologically to cope with the infection.