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Virologist Margarita del Val assures that "the ideal" would be to receive the vaccine "three or four weeks before starting any treatment that will compromise the immune system."
Virologist Margarita del Val considered this Monday that patients with cancer and an immune system weakened by a specific treatment "are among the groups that most need vaccines against Covid-19", so they should be given priority.
Del Val, who participated in the XXIII 'Cancer Reviews' symposium, which from February 8 to 12 will bring together a hundred experts to debate cancer treatment in 2021, specified that those patients who had cancer or who immune system is not weakened "they do not need any prioritization.
For this scientist, "the ideal" would be to receive the vaccine "three or four weeks before starting any treatment that will compromise the immune system."
In his opinion, it is recommended that cancer patients be vaccinated when the immune system is going to respond as best as possible, that is, "when the blood formula has recovered and there are normal levels of lymphocytes."
And he has insisted that cancer patients with a weakened system are among the groups "that need these vaccines the most, since any additional protection they may have is good."
This scientist has proposed vaccinating "if it is known that chemotherapy is going to begin so that antibodies are produced, since the antibodies persist and will be resistant."
Regarding transmission, Del Val recalled that the one who is vaccinated is the one who is protected and has assured that herd immunity will only be achieved when the immunized person becomes a non-infectious person. "As long as this is not clear, herd immunity cannot be calculated," he added.
The head of the service at the University Hospital of Elche (Alicante) and president of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology, Álvaro Rodríguez-Lescure, also participated in the 'Cancer and Covid' table, who spoke along the same lines and considered that patients with cancer and an immunosuppressive system should have priority in vaccination.
Rodríguez-Lescure has also referred to the "diagnostic limbo" that cancer patients have suffered during the pandemic and the "wall" they have faced in accessing specialists in family and community medicine.
He has also highlighted the "jam" in hospital care with "closed or delayed consultations" and in the entire chain that usually "works well" and that has been paralyzed.
This specialist has lamented that during the pandemic, operating rooms have become "extra beds" to keep Covid patients intubated and has denounced the "kidnapping of human resources and diagnoses" for cancer patients, the result of a "collapsed" system. ".
