LONDON: A new study has claimed that a potential vaccine against COVID-19 may not be effective against older people who are most at risk of contracting and dying from the disease.
Professor Peter Openshaw, from Imperial, one of the members of the UK’s Sage scientific advisory sub-group Nervtag, said, “Sometimes it is possible to protect a vulnerable group by targeting another group and this, for example, is being done with influenza.” He said, “In the past few years, the UK has been at the forefront of rolling out the live attenuated vaccine for children.”
According to him, giving the nasal spray flu vaccine to children who do not often get severe flu protects their grandparents. “Immunising health and care workers – who are likely to be the first to get the vaccine would also help protect older people who have the most contact with them,” he said.
Arne Akbar, professor of immunology at UCL said scientists needed to work out what goes wrong with the immune system as people get older. “One thing that is apparent, even in healthy older people, is that there’s more inflammation all around the body.”
“We need to understand where that inflammation is coming from,” he added. “And this baseline inflammation in older people is linked to frailty and many negative outcomes as we get older. Also, this seems to be exacerbated when you get a severe infection like Covid-19,” he added.
“So for older people, you might have something like an anti-inflammatory drug, like maybe dexamethasone, together with vaccine responses to give you the maximum benefit,” he further added.
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