Popular Science: Is it feasible to mix vaccination of different new crown vaccines?

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, February 14 (Reporter Zhang Ying) Many countries around the world are facing the pressure of insufficient supply of new crown vaccines, especially the problem of "hard to get one dose" in low-income countries

The University of Oxford in the UK recently issued a communiqué saying that a clinical trial led by researchers at the school will explore the feasibility of using different new crown vaccines for the first and second doses of "booster shots"

The researchers will recruit more than 800 volunteers aged 50 and over from eight trial sites supported by the UK's National Institutes of Health, and will first evaluate a vaccine developed by Oxford University in collaboration with UK-based AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, as well as by US-based Pfizer and US-based Pfizer.

The trial will also assess the effect of the first dose and "boost" doses separated by 4 or 12 weeks, respectively

"If we can indeed show that these vaccines can be used interchangeably in the same (vaccination) schedule, it will greatly increase the flexibility of vaccine supply," Matthew Snape, the lead researcher of the trial and an associate professor at the University of Oxford, said in the communique

The two vaccines selected for this trial use different technical routes.

The immunization strategy of mixing different vaccines has been used in the prevention and control of infectious diseases such as Ebola

Jonathan Wenxin, deputy chief medical officer for England, said the co-mingling trial of the new crown vaccine will give people a better understanding of how a vaccine can be used to fight the "intractable" disease

Snape said the trial has the potential to provide clues to how a coronavirus vaccine might work against more new strains

Until data from clinical trials are available, health agencies in many countries are cautious about mixing vaccines

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pointed out that the two mRNA new crown vaccines approved in the United States cannot be used interchangeably or mixed with other new crown vaccines, unless it is impossible to determine which new crown vaccine was injected in the first dose, or the first dose of a new crown vaccine is completed.

The scientific issue of mixed vaccination of different new crown vaccines is still being explored by scientists