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“But with a brand-new flu virus — and H5N1 definitely falls into that category for humans — everyone will be naive. So the assumption of pandemic planners is that everyone would need two doses of vaccine in the first season of vaccinating against H5N1. (During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the new virus was distantly related to one that had circulated for much of the previous century, and one dose was adequate for protection. There’s no expectation that would be true with an H5 pandemic.)”
“That math is daunting: The 8.1 billion people worldwide times two is 16.2 billion doses. Babies under the age of 6 months aren’t vaccinated against flu — their immune systems aren’t yet sufficiently developed for it to be effective — so that number would be a bit lower. But there’s always waste in vaccine delivery, so the 16 billion probably isn’t far off.”
“Moderna is currently testing an H5N1 vaccine, from the 2.3.4.4b subset of viruses, in people. That trial began last summer.”
But the trial’s listing in the Clinicaltrials.gov database is cagey about the dosages Moderna is testing, calling them simply dose number 1, 2 and 3.
“regulators will want more data before they embrace mRNA vaccines as a solution in a flu pandemic — though he and others have noted that in a true crisis, “all bets are off.”
“I think if we make the proper investments, we could very soon get to the point where we know what the dose needs to be and have mRNA vaccines against avian strains as part of our arsenal and scale it quickly.”
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image: Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green). (From the Public Domain)
