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Researchers Margarita del Val and Ignacio López Goñi break false myths about the pandemic in a series of conferences in Huesca and give an optimistic but cautious vision of the short-term future.
"Unvaccinated people have the same risk of ending up in the ICU or dying as they did a few months ago because the virus has not weakened, it is the same and in fact it is transmitted more. Therefore, do not trust that we are going to protect others with community immunity". This is the strong message that they launched coincidentally Margaret of the Valley, scientific researcher at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center, and Ignacio López Goñi, professor of Microbiology at the University of Navarra, two of the most authoritative scientific voices during this pandemic. Both participated this Wednesday they participated in a conference cycle coordinated by the Aragonese researcher Alberto J. Schumacher and organized by the Pyrenees headquarters of the International University Menéndez Pelayo at the Olympia Theater de Huesca.
Del Val and López Goñi gave a optimistic but still cautious view in the short and medium term since they estimate that Looking ahead to this coming autumn and winter there could be an increase in cases, although they do not expect them to be serious thanks to the very high level of vaccination in Spain.. "What would be expected from now on is that there would be small waves. What we have to worry about from now on is not the number of cases, but the number of serious cases, hospitalizations and deaths," they stated. However, they insisted on continuing to recommend the use of a mask, social distancing, small social bubbles, hygiene and ventilation.
The researcher emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated because it has been shown that they have a lasting protection. And in response to the doubts that have arisen about whether they are really safe having been developed so quickly, he answered that "the fact of having been made so quickly makes them the safest in history because before it took years to get volunteers, funding, studies, factories to produce them... and now all this has been achieved in a very short time and on top of that the adverse effects have been detected very quickly and they have been able to be quickly put a stop to," argued Margarita del Val.
Margarita del Val assured that vaccination is also necessary among those people who have been able to pass the disease because in that second exposure is when they generate better antibodies in the immune system. And in fact he confessed that "envy" to this profile of people "because they are the ones with the most powerful defenses".
What he did not recommend is the administration of a third dose except for immunosuppressed people.. Instead of this "hypervaccination" in Spain, he called for a more equitable distribution of these vaccines so that they reach the countries with fewer resources. In this sense, he criticized that only 344 million vaccines have arrived for 144 countries when 40 million people have been vaccinated with two doses in Spain alone.
According to the vaccination in children, also agreed that the debate is still open since They have fewer benefits than in older people and a much lower risk of becoming seriously ill which the researcher quantified 250 times. In addition, they highlighted that for now studies indicate that up to the age of 18 the effects are mild and there are hardly any after-effects.
Both scientists attributed the delay who wear the Spanish vaccines to lack of public funds that are intended for research. "If money has not been dedicated to research groups in the past, we cannot expect them to go at a greater speed. The University of Oxford put more than 100 people to work on the Astra Zeneca vaccine and hundreds of millions were allocated of euros, but here we allocate maybe 10 or 20 million and 10 people and of course, that's how you go at the speed you go," lamented Ignacio López Goñi. Even so, They predicted a great future for the intranasal vaccine being developed by Luis Enjuanes' team, director of the Coronavirus laboratory at the CSIC Biotechnology Center, "because it could generate sterilizing immunity against all types of respiratory infections and now there is none."
The series of conferences was titled 'Fighting pseudosciences and the infodemic' and therefore they did not shy away from questions about the theory that the virus could have been created in a laboratory in China. The two experts admitted that although it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out, the most likely thing, "and in which there is a scientific consensus," they stressed, is that the the origin of this coronavirus be welfare "because everyone we know until now comes from them." "We have data on this, on the other there is only speculation," they insisted, although they also believed that the ideal would be for there to be an independent investigation.
