Giving Pfizer vaccines to healthy 20-30 year-olds irrational and unscientific: AMS

Administering Pfizer vaccine to healthy 20-30 year-old youth, who can effectively mount an adequate immune response with the Sinopharm vaccine was irrational and unscientific, the Association of Medical Specialists said. 

The AMS said in a statement that it was very important that the immunization has to be done in a scientific manner and that the rational policy would be to immunize the unvaccinated vulnerable as a priority, and then to consider a booster dose to the fully vaccinated group who are at risk of severe diseases. 

“Data from Bahrain, and also from Prof. Malavige's group suggests that, while people below 60 years mount a good immune response to Sinopharm vaccine, It is evident that a minority of people over 60 years of age do not produce an antibody response (seroconvert) and are at a higher risk of hospitalization and death, compared to those who were given Pfizer/Moderna/ AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines. In addition, certain groups (transplant recipients/cancer patients on therapy/recipients of immunosuppressive drugs) do not mount adequate immune response following two doses of vaccine. Both these groups should receive a third dose of AZ/Pfizer/Modena vaccine to prevent such undesirable outcome, they said.

They said that administering covid vaccines should be done with the advice of a competent body of experts, such as the ACCD of the Ministry of Health.

“Deviation from the advice of the ACCD has already cost many lives by giving Covid vaccines to 30 to 60 age groups before completing the vaccination of the above 60-year group. We hope, even at this later stage, decisions will be taken in a more rational manner based on scientific evidence,” the AMS said.

They said the priority of the immunization programme should be to save lives, and reduce hospitalization of covid patients.

“For this purpose, we need to initially immunize the vulnerable; i.e. those over 60 years and those with comorbidities. Though recommended, this policy was not implemented initially, resulting in the high death rate seen today. In addition, a sizable proportion of fully vaccinated people are also succumb to Covid 19, or filling much-needed hospital beds and ICUs,” the statement added.

“We reiterate as a union of responsible medical specialists, decision makers should always adhere to the vaccine deployment plan prepared by ACCD and submitted to WHO” the AMS said.(Ajith Siriwardana)