Two primary doses followed by booster crucial for all: Top virologist

'Immunisation schedule must be completed by all individuals if we have to win this war against Covid,' he said

One of India's top virologists, T. Jacob John, said on Saturday that completing a full Covid immunisation schedule of two primary doses followed by a booster dose is absolutely crucial.

"It is not the end of Coronavirus, nor is it in the pandemic state. Immunisation schedule must be completed by all individuals if we have to win this war against Covid," John said at an event held here on Saturday to felicitate him for his contributions to the field of medical science.

The event also marked the release of his book titled 'Polio: The Eradication Imbroglio'. Founder-Chairman of Bharat Biotech, Krishna Ella, was also present at the event.

In the book, John talkls about the polio virus that is transferrable through air and not via faecal-oral route as was believed previously.

Talking about the polio vaccine, he said that inactivated vaccines like the injectable polio vaccination (IPV) is the safest vaccine platform available today.

"I have said it many times over, inactivated virus vaccines have had no history of any adverse reaction. We have seen that is the case with the polio IPVs and I have reason to believe that it will be the same against Covid and its variants," he said.

"SARS Coronavirus type-2 has not behaved like any virus that we have known until 2019-2020. It doesn't follow our virology rules. Therefore, bringing an analytical comparison between this and the polio virus, even though both are single stranded positive sense rNA viruses, is not the right approach," he added.

John said that there are a few lessons that we have learnt which we can extrapolate to the Covid situation.

"When faced with a pandemic where people are dying in large numbers, particularly those with severe comorbidities and the elderly, there is no option but to restrict fatalities as much as possible. In such a scenario, even if the vaccine causes serious adverse reactions in small numbers, the risk benefit ratio is far higher in the favour of preventing deaths," he said.

--IANS

avr/arm