COVID-19 Vaccine progress from the WHO

It's tough being a teenager at the best of times during the pandemic. It's so much worse homeschooling no hanging out with friends massive stress all because of covid19. In fact, more and more young people are getting infected in Germany. The number of cases among teens rose 11 adolescents have until recently been tested less because they aren't as impacted by the virus but they could be asymptomatic carriers. Recent outbreaks have been linked to them spreading the virus. Doctors say vaccinations for kids are key to achieve levels of immunity. We need in our community welcome to our Covid 19 special.

I’m Monica jones and like millions of others, I’m still waiting for my shot. Now the good news is worldwide more than a billion doses have by now been administered and teenagers in the united states have a clear advantage those aged 16 and up can now receive the BioNTech Pfizer shot and anyone 18 and up can get the modern shop for all of them. This means the days of isolation are soon over daily training during the pandemic that's how these two brothers have gotten through the last months both will soon get vaccinated. The US has promised teenagers a jab in the near future being that age is hard enough with the covert restrictions.

It has been even more challenging, I think for me, it's mental health and of course like schools. I think some, I was worried like they're being back because they're not going to school. They're behind but I think they're ways to catch up with academics but with growth and socialization. You know, it's that's harder school has been moved into the living room. The boys can't wait to get their vaccine so it keeps the people my people around me safer and I don't keep myself safe to the vaccine would bring a little normality back. I don't miss school exactly by the people in school because you know it it's really difficult not to interact with people and to talk to people and um yeah. I mean he's an awesome guy but he's just my brother, he's not a friend for them.

An additional obstacle mask, it's very hard to see people's expressions and it just gives a sense of like you're talking to a wall or it's just an audio audiobook. The US is quick with vaccinations but what if as in other countries restrictions remained. It would definitely reduce my social skills. I’m really really not the most socially outgoing person but I think that would not really be good for me that's why I’m trying to go back to school. Lucy Brown is a social worker and sees a huge opportunity in teenage vaccination teens need to be with their peers and need to be taking social risks and doing things on their own outside of the confines of their family home for a teenager to have the opportunity to be vaccinated. I think is tremendous to give them that freedom to move about with a lot more confidence for both themselves and for their parents that they can go about their lives and do the things that they're developmentally supposed to be doing right. Now outside of the US, most teenagers don't have access to the vaccine yet they have to find other ways to keep going so the question is how long until young people can be vaccinated on a grand scale.

Let's ask Rolf Hemke, he's a science communicator of the German Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies, that's the good to have you with us. Now as you know case numbers among young people are rising here in Germany, the number of new cases among teenagers. Actually now equals those of older people of over 60 and as far as I know, there's no vaccine inside for the younger age group is there that's good news one company has applied for approval for its vaccine for adolescents, so it seems we are only weeks away from an approved vaccine for this age group also some other companies are developing their vaccines for this age group and even for younger children so most likely within the next months this year we will get four more vaccines which are approved for this age well that is good news indeed but I wonder why can't we just use the existing vaccines on teenagers just like they now do in the United States. We need not change anything in the composition, it's all about safety so we can use those vaccines when we know that it's safe to use them in this age group also with children. We can use the same vaccines but we need to know what is the good appropriate dosing so what are the risks that we know about for teenagers and children getting vaccinated well most likely the risks will be no other than for adults well this is something we need to know and that's why clinical trials are made with various age groups to see if the risks indeed are low and the benefit is high. Now of course this takes time I mean you say we're just weeks away from at least one vaccine for children which are brilliant in the meantime however do those risks outweigh the risk of catching the virus which as we know by now can lead to severe inflammatory reactions in children known as PIMS or also long covet well that's what trials are for they are designed so that you see that indeed vaccines are safe and once they are approved you can offer them to parents and their children with confirmed safety and who is actually investing in vaccine trials for children well all the companies that have far developed vaccines for Covid-19.

They invest in such trials right from the start they expected to develop the vaccines for all age groups and the EU also expects the company to do so you just mentioned earlier and I have to get back to that because that is good news indeed that we may have a vaccine ready for children in just a few weeks from now and there are several other trials underway will this vaccine only be available for children here in Europe are we talking about a vaccine for kids all over the world. These vaccine trials that are have been carried out are just being carried out they will lead to safety and efficacy data which can be used all over the world to apply for approval and that's what the companies have in mind also the Chinese companies which have developed vaccines they have also included children in their trials so that they as well can offer vaccines that are suitable for children. So hopefully, within the next months, we will get a set of vaccines that are approved to all age groups and then it's to politics and to logistics to get them out to every child in the world all right well. Let's hope that politics and logistics are not getting in the way to get everybody vaccinated royal film from the German Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies thank you so much for your time thank you so vaccination is one way to train our immune system against the virus another is catching it and recover again but does this always work time to ask to do asymptomatic people develop weaker immune responses than people who have more severe disease okay. This is going to get probably horrendously complicated because we're still so far from unraveling the immune system which immunologists compare to a ball of spaghetti which is a really brilliant image even understanding just why some people can be infected yet show no symptoms is a really complicated task early in the pandemic studies that focused on antibody levels in patients and former patients indicated that people who got severe cases of covid19 might have longer-lasting immune responses and that asymptomatic people might be at more risk of getting the disease again at some point but antibody levels are just one aspect of the immune response.

A recently published study has now helped fill in some of the other gaps. It looked at blood samples taken from several hundred male migrant workers in Singapore who lived in densely inhabited dormitories during an outbreak. There last spring and its findings agree with other research in one sense that levels of some antibodies against coved-19 in the men who got it asymptomatically did indeed fall more after convalescence than in those who had symptoms other immune responses, however, including ones involving what are known as cells they remained fairly robust even in the asymptomatic group and that's being carefully interpreted as a sign that immunity might generally remain strong for some time even in people who caught the disease but had no symptoms so lots of ifs and buts like I said it's complicated.

Now talking of complicated the relationship between the EU and AstraZeneca is anything but easy the European Commission has just announced it's launched legal action against the British Swedish Drug Maker for not respecting its contract for the supply of covid 19 vaccines. 180 million vaccine doses were agreed for the second quarter of this year but AstraZeneca said it would aim to deliver only one-third of that to the block Rostella Kiriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety explained the decision on Twitter saying every vaccine dose counts every vaccine dose saves lives and that's all for this edition. Thanks for reading!