VANCOUVER — A team of B.C. doctors, researchers and clinicians is urging the provincial government to reconsider its vaccination strategy for the elderly after they found seniors aren’t developing enough antibodies to COVID-19 after one dose of the Pfizer vaccine – a recommendation that’s become more urgent with the expansion of visitation to care homes.
A preprint published Wednesday by 20 experts from University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and St. Paul’s Hospital found that seniors with a median age of 82 produced lower levels of COVID-19 antibodies, and the ones they did produce weren’t as good at blocking the virus.
They concluded: “We recommend that second doses not be delayed in elderly individuals.”
“In general, extending the dosing interval is a good idea because the second dose, when it’s a bit further from the first dose, is more powerful, but that’s not necessarily the case in older people,” explained study co-author and St. Paul’s Hospital medical microbiology and virology leader, Dr. Marc Romney. “The message to extend the interval might need to be nuanced a bit based on the population – we know in long-term care, people are surrounded by a highly-vaccinated population of healthcare workers, but older people in the community are not.”