Experts do not foresee that Covid-19 can be “eradicated”: “A mask remains for a while”

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Vaccines are clearly working. However, scientists do not believe that Covid-19 can be eradicated. “It’s practically impossible. We will be somewhere between elimination and control ”.

This has been pointed out Iñaki Comas, researcher at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) at the Institute of Biomedicine of Valencia (IBV-CSIC), in the ‘II Symposium Observatory of Health: The Lessons of Covid-19’, organized by EL ESPAÑOL and Invertia, and that has kicked off this Monday.

One lesson that the pandemic will leave for all Spaniards, however, is that the masks “go for a while” and they have even come to stay in specific contexts, such as flu epidemics and hospital settings. This has been the unanimous opinion in a debate in which researchers as well known to the public as Luis Enjuanes and Adolfo García-Sastre.

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To get to control the pandemic, “we need a significant level of immunity at the planetary level”. And not only that, “we must also do studies on whether a third dose is necessary and create and promote good mechanisms to take vaccines to less favored places,” he said. Eduardo López-Collazo, scientific director of the La Paz University Hospital Research Institute (IdiPaz), who has shared the stage with Margarita del Val, virologist and immunologist of the CSIC and Iñaki Comas in the second round table of the Symposium.

Along these lines, Margarita del Val has emphasized the need to “be all vaccinated.” He has spoken about the possible waves to come and, in his words, “they won’t be so critical”. In fact, “this summer has been better than the previous ones.”

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However, “we will have to see what happens this autumn-winter.” Del Val has warned that “antibodies are not a single marker to assess how dangerous a variant can be. Immune memory and clinical symptoms must be studied (if there is a rise in cases in a population where there was not before) ”.

For this reason, López-Collazo has stressed the need to carry out cellular immunity studies “to determine whether a second dose (in the case of Janssen) or a third is necessary. The results will give us certainty of when, who and when to vaccinate again”.

The coronavirus does not lose strength

Luis Enjuanes, virologist of the CSIC; Adolfo García-Sastre, director of the Institute for Global Health and Emerging Pathogens at Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai in New York; José Ramón Arribas, specialist in the Internal Medicine Area of ​​the University Hospital of La Paz (IdiPaz); and Ricardo Pujol, immunologist and principal investigator in Diagnostic Immunology at the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute, have formed the third round table on the first day of the II Symposium of the Health Observatory.

“In the laboratory we had been working with coronavirus for a long time, We already knew for 35 years that this epidemic would come “, explains Enjuanes, who was forced by the pandemic to postpone his retirement. “And we hoped that what happened would happen: that the virus would spread better and better.” However, the virologist warns that there is no sign of attenuation of SARS-CoV-2. “The pathology has not been reduced,” he confirms.

“I believe that we are going towards a downward curve. The purpose of the germ is not to damage the organism, but to expand”, has valued Pujol, corroborating the hypothesis of Enjuanes of a desirable attenuation of the virus that allows us to live with it. “I hope this is the last winter that gives us war“.

García-Sastre, for his part, reflects on the problems in the US to complete the vaccination schedule. “It is difficult to see how there is so much disease and so many people to be vaccinated in a country that was the first to start. I was vaccinated at the end of last year, and high levels of vaccination were quickly reached, even among children. “Politicization in political discourse and the media is behind this attitude: although many American citizens do not distrust vaccines, they refuse to wear them because “no one should tell them what to do.”

In this sense, Arribas has wanted to cite the example of United Kingdom, which has vaccination rates very similar to Spain but “not going well”, because after the declaration of ‘Freedom Day’ there is no imposition of masks in public places. “In Spain, we find that last year there was no flu or respiratory virus. I believe that in hospitals, masks should continue to be mandatory,” he reflects, especially at times like flu epidemics.

An opinion shared by Enjuanes: “The mask has been found to be very useful and we cannot be trusted. We still have a mask for a while “. The virologist explains that he carries it “always” in his pocket: “If I go alone in the forest, I take it off, but in a crowded place, even outdoors, I wear it.” For his part, García-Sastre regrets that in the US several states have repealed the use of the mask despite its proven effectiveness in trying to pretend that the “pandemic is over.”

The new treatments

Specialists have also discussed the future of drug treatment for Covid. Monoclonal antibodies still have to be administered intravenously, García-Sastre explains, “and they are not accessible to everyone.” Oral versions are being tested, but their effectiveness is still unknown. “Finding an antiviral is one in a million“, he values, and what is desirable is that the new generation were” less specific “for Covid and applicable to future viruses.

“We have advanced a lot in the knowledge of the germ but we still do not understand the Covid patient well,” reflects Pujol for his part. “If we want to treat the sick well, we have to understand who is damaging the virus, and give antivirals, and which ones are suffering from inflammationIn this sense, Arribas regrets the lack of “a large national trial” in Spain in the early stages of the pandemic to identify which drugs were more effective.

Enjuanes, meanwhile, celebrates the “luck” of having companies that have come up with simple vaccines based on a breakthrough, messenger RNA technology. However, the next step is to obtain sterilizing vaccines: “If administered nasally they would be more effective. We need to induce immunity to the respiratory virus in the nasal mucosa“Although it is a riskier route than intravenous due to the possible involvement of the brain, the virologist confirms that large companies are tackling this” challenge. “

In what experts agree is that the pandemic must transform the health system because it is not a question of asking if a new pandemic will come, not when it will. “It does not occur to any country to stop having an army because we have not had a war for 100 years. I have lived through the AIDS epidemic, I have given care for Ebola, and it is to be hoped that the health system has learned to be prepared, “concludes Arribas.

Plea for science

“Without science there is no future”. For that reason, Spanish scientists have called for “stability.” And it is that, when the pandemic arrived, “Spain had no foundations and it has responded well thanks to an overexertion”.

A point on which all the speakers of the scientific block of the II Health Observatory have agreed.

A stability with which they hope that “the foundations created are maintained for next health crises”Comas added.

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