As Barbados prepares to roll out the first 100 000 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine to battle COVID-19, Government is being urged to put plans in place to monitor the antibody production that results from inoculation, instead of blindly relying on information from abroad.
Speaking during a nationally televised briefing hosted by the COVID-19 Communications Unit late yesterday evening, Acting Medical Officer of Health Dr Omar Edwards acknowledged that it was important for Barbados to get first-hand information on how the vaccine performed among its population.
He noted that the technology and medical resources were readily available for such an undertaking.
“The first part of our campaign is to get the vaccine out there, but the backup science is also very good because we want to see a robust antibody response. So, it would be good to see what happens in our population when they get the vaccine.
“I think that yes, we should do some sampling for antibodies once we have administered the course and see what is happening scientifically in Barbados. The vaccine has come from overseas, but we want to know and see how our population responds to it,” said Edwards.
He explained that it would take about 15 days after the second dose of the vaccine was administered before any sampling could be done to determine level of antibody response.
“This is when we would expect a significant antibody response to be mounted. As we sample the population, if we find for whatever reason that this is not the case, then we have to look back at the science, we have to look back at what is going on.”
The doctor pointed out that every population had its own set of unique genetic markers. As such, these types of redundancies were necessary to determine if a drug or vaccine catered to the genetic make-up of a region. (CLM)
