Mix-and-match Covid booster jabs ‘success’: Bahrain

Mix-and-match Covid booster jabs ‘success’: Bahrain

A mix-and-match Covid-19 vaccination procedure proved its worth when it came to booster jabs, latest research has revealed.

Augmenting a two-dose Sinopharm vaccination schedule with a Pfizer booster provided individuals with stronger immunity against the virus, compared to sticking with a Sinopharm booster.

The research study was conducted by a team of 49 researchers led by Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Bahrain founding head of microbiology and Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) Hospital infectious disease consultant and microbiologist Lt Col Dr Manaf Al Qahtani, who is also part of the National Medical Taskforce for Combating the Coronavirus.

“Two prime-boost schedules were compared: arm that received two doses of BBIBP (the industry term for Sinopharm) in the previous three to six months, followed by a third homologous booster of BBIBP, and a second arm that received two doses of BBIBP in the previous three to six months, followed by a third heterologous booster dose of BNT (Pfizer-BioNTech),” researchers wrote in the study.

The study is titled, ‘Safety and Efficacy of Covid-19 Prime-Boost Vaccinations: Homologous BBIBP-CorV versus Heterologous BNT162b2 Boosters in BBIBP-CorVPrimed Individuals’ and has been accepted for publication in the upcoming edition of Vaccine, the official journal for the Japanese Society for Vaccinology.

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