The guest of the Antikovid program at the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station was a world-renowned scientist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Vice President for Biomedical Research of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology Mikhail Gelfand.
COVID-IN-COVID-19 COVID-19
– Mikhail Sergeevich, the other day foreign media published new data from the CDC – the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts warn: the delta strain of the coronavirus has been domiciled to the point that the level of infectiousness is equal to chickenpox. How would you rate such a statement? Does this mean that the pandemic will grow at an ever-increasing pace?
– The fact that new variants of the coronavirus are transmitted faster between people than the original strain, it became clear back in the spring. According to the mind, epidemiological measures should be quite tough. In a situation where the majority of the population is not vaccinated and is not going to, the only way to avoid additional diseases and deaths is quarantine. But nobody will go for it. Therefore, the epidemic will gain strength, people will get sick and die.
– There is an opinion that something even more dangerous than the current strain awaits us. Do you agree with that?
– It is necessary to distinguish between infectiousness and mortality. These are different properties of the virus. When strains are more likely to be transmitted, they gain an evolutionary advantage and spread.
– That is, it is beneficial for the virus to be more infectious, but becoming more deadly is unprofitable – right?
– When we say “the virus is beneficial”, you need to understand that it does not have free will. There is no virus committee that decides: where should we guys go, in which direction to mutate? This is a purely probabilistic process. But it is well described by the classic, still from Darwin's grandfather, ideas about how evolution works. Variants of the virus that are more dangerous to humans, increase mortality, do not have an evolutionary advantage. But accidents play a role too. Therefore, such options (more deadly – Ed.) May well appear.
THREE MAIN VACCINATION BONUSES
– New data appears almost every day, and people are worried: will the vaccine work, given the continuous changes of the virus? What is known today about the effectiveness of vaccines against mutant strains?
“The data tell us that the Sputnik V vaccine does help prevent getting sick. Even with new strains. In this case, the vaccine “breaks through”, that is, the vaccinated person, however, can get sick. But this chance is many orders of magnitude less than if you were not vaccinated.
The second point: the vaccine helps even sick people not to die and, most likely, avoid long-term unpleasant consequences (postkovid. – Ed.). Finally, getting vaccinated helps those around you. The development of the epidemic depends on the proportion of vaccinated citizens. If this proportion is large enough, then the infection does not spread further. There are people who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons – their lives literally depend on all of us. If there is a large proportion of vaccinated or ill people in society and at the same time there are many people whose immunity has not been encountered with the virus, then this is exactly the situation when evolutionarily the best prerequisites for the emergence of new variants of the virus capable of “breaking through” immunity arise.
Now we are in just such a position. Some people were vaccinated, and some were not – in fact, it is a bioreactor for the emergence of new strains of coronavirus.
VACCATED MASKS – PAY FOR SECURITY
– When we say that vaccinated people can become infected and get sick, the question arises: how actively will they transmit the virus to others at this time? Our Rospotrebnadzor canceled PCR tests when returning from abroad for vaccinated people, explaining that such people rarely and weakly excrete the virus if they themselves caught it. But American scientists recently announced that with a new delta strain, the vaccinated, in case of infection, release the virus into the environment as intensely as the unvaccinated. Therefore, in the United States, it was decided that the vaccinated should wear masks in the same way as everyone else. In Russia, after vaccination, people rarely and reluctantly put on masks. What do you think of it?
– Unfortunately, there are a large number of questions to which we do not have exact answers, because there are no statistics. The Delta variant appeared in the spring. We did not have time to collect statistics on how dangerous it is. It is difficult for a person to live in a situation where even the authorities do not know. But this is our reality. In such a situation, it is better to err on the side of caution. You need to wear masks. I wear, although I am grafted. This is inconvenient, but it is a very small price to pay for security.
– The Israeli Ministry of Health reported that the Pfizer vaccine, with which the majority of the population is vaccinated, protects against infection with the Delta strain by 39%. What do we know in this regard about Sputnik?
– There is no Russian data on this issue at all. They must be collected. At the same time, I would like to clarify: the fact that Pfizer is 39% effective against Delta infection is preliminary data. At the same time, it is known that this vaccine protects 88% from hospitalization and 91% from a severe course of the disease when infected with the Indian strain. Apparently, the situation is similar with Sputnik. This is a good vaccine. Another thing is that Sputnik's PR was terrible. When they said on TV that we are the best, only we have the real vaccine. And about foreign vaccines – sheer nightmares. Such an information campaign causes distrust of all vaccines at once, including Sputnik. It was a colossal failure to publicly support the vaccination campaign.
WHAT DOES THE RESPONSE TO A VACCINE DEPEND ON?
– Our listeners ask: what determines the different reaction to the Sputnik V vaccine? Someone did not feel anything at all after the injection, while others lay for several days in a state similar to a severe flu.
– There are no high-quality medical statistics on this matter today. None of the vaccines in the world. But we understand that post-vaccination reactions are associated with individual characteristics of immunity. And, apparently, there is no connection between how strong the reaction was after vaccination and how “good” immunity was established.
You have to understand: the vaccine itself is not a harmless thing. We compare the risks of complications from the vaccine. This is a complete interval – from the fact that nothing happened to the fact that a person has a high temperature for a day or two. Severe complications are extremely rare, too, with vaccination. But we must compare these risks with the threat of getting sick, getting severe covid and dying. Or after recovery, suffer for a long time from the consequences of the disease. And such a threat is incomparably stronger than the risk from vaccination. However, no one officially talks about this, does not explain. And people see that the neighbor is lying for two days after the vaccine. And the person has the feeling that he is being deceived. This must be said honestly: yes, there may be a fairly strong post-vaccination reaction. But it will be short-lived and will pass, but the protection will remain.
Shall we live with covid like with the flu?
– Mikhail Sergeevich, will the virus and vaccination against it now stay with us forever?
– From a biological point of view, based on what we know now, the virus will remain and will circulate. Even if we persuade all our fellow citizens to be grafted into, which I do not believe in, we will have a great, wonderful Africa, and planes will take off from there from time to time. Most likely, the coronavirus will circulate all the time. And new strains will continue to emerge that will overcome the immune defenses from previous vaccines. But vaccines will also develop. The virus will run away from us, and we will catch up with it.
It seems that there will be a regular vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 and its new variants, which will keep the epidemic at a not as terrible level as it is now.
