“If I had argued as a student that a person who has antibodies to an infection is as likely to get sick as another who does not, if I had said that having them or not having them is the same thing, they would have failed me.” Nino Mazzone, among the Italian doctors infected during the second wave of Covid-19 (in November 2020 he found himself hospitalized overnight in the ward he directs at the hospital in Legnano, in the Milanese area), is convinced pro vax and pro pass, but also firm in saying that the recovered may not need to be vaccinated in the short term to protect themselves from a virus they have already known. And today at Adnkronos Salute he returns to denounce “the clouding of minds, the blind and obstinate vision” that leads the Technical Scientific Committee for the coronavirus emergency and the health authorities to support the uselessness of the anti-Sars-CoV antibody test -2.
“For a year – recalls the head physician, director of the Department of Medical Area, Chronicity and Continuity of Care of the Asst Ovest Milanese – we have been arguing that patients recovered from Covid have developed dramatically different immunity from those vaccinated, a robust, long-lasting and high For a year we have been fighting for antibodies to be measured before deciding whether or not to administer the vaccine to the recovered. But we were mocked and insulted, despite the study we published in Jama Internal Medicine at the end of May and that shows how, after one year, the reinfection rates in the healed are less than 1%. Data confirmed by other groups also in ‘The Lancet’ “and above all by the facts:” To date, of people who have recovered from Covid after being healed, there is no trace in the resuscitation “, assures Mazzone.
“For a year – he continues – we have been supporting what Robert Redfield also said in recent days, until a few months ago at the head of the American CDC: the antibody test must be done”, indeed more. It must be made “mandatory with deadlines of 3 or 6 months,” said Redfield who also sets safety thresholds. “I calculate the minimum level of resistance between 300 and 500 antibodies without other pathologies”, he explained in an interview with ‘La Repubblica’, while “at an altitude of 1,000 antibodies you are much safer” even in the case of other concomitant diseases. If you go below, you need “immediately a booster that can bring back” antibodies “up to about 2,500 and beyond”. But if we stay on top, no, Mazzone specifies who relaunches his appeal: “Vaccination policies must be targeted on the basis of the data that emerge, to avoid the risk of overtreatment and potential vaccine side effects that – he warns – in those who already have antibodies appear more often “.
While in Italy the campaign on third doses of the anti-Covid vaccine is advancing and there are those who also propose a fourth dose, and then others, the Sicilian doctor transplanted for years in Lombardy, specialist in internal medicine, hematology, clinical immunology and allergology, asks the CTS to abandon “a clinical methodology that does not respect the principles of medicine based on evidence. Primum non nocere”, invokes Mazzone. “Is it right to give the third dose to everyone without knowing the effects of the first two, especially in the immunosuppressed?”, He asks. “Is this a good medicine, a medicine based on evidence, the one over which illustrious professors and consultants fight every night on TV?”, He asks again. “It is useless to scream if you then ignore the data”.
“There are two things”, the expert reasons: “Either the competent authorities have authorized unreliable tests on the immunity study, or the results of the antibodies must be validated and these tests made fundamental to decide on present and future vaccination strategies. . We need clarity in comparing the data between natural immunity “, that which is activated when our natural defenses meet a pathogen, fight it and overcome it,” and acquired immunity “conferred by the vaccine, urges Mazzone.
“This is a fundamental element to be able to decide on a strategy that will have to be global”, he admonishes. “Sars-CoV-2 infection generates immunity – the doctor repeats – an immunity that by now several published studies, in addition to ours, indicate as stable and complete. An immunity determined not only by antibodies, but also by cells of the memory. Which – he observes – implies a prolonged ability, perhaps years long, to respond to a new infection with new antibodies “.
For Mazzone “the time has come to seriously ask the questions that Mitchell H. Katz of the New York Medical School, on the Jama board of editors, posed in the editorial to comment on our data. Questions that have not yet been clearly answered by institutions “and which can be summarized in one:” How much protection against future infections does a previous Sars-CoV-2 infection provide? “.
In other words, “are we sure that it is right to vaccinate the recovered after a few months – the specialist wonders – when many vulnerable people are still unprotected and while the majority of the world population is not immunized? Wouldn’t it be better to understand this first? to allocate hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine to those who may not need it, which could be released and made available to poor countries? “.
“We compare the real clinical differences between those who have natural immunity and those who have acquired”, insists the expert: “Reinfection rate, hospitalization, severity of symptoms, access to intensive care. These – concludes the primary cured, and vaccinated according to the ministerial indications as he is keen to make known – these are the data we now need to allow us to better use the essential weapon of the vaccine. emergency? Let doctors decide, based on clinical history and antibody dosage, based on the evidence, whether a person is eligible or not entitled to the Green pass. ”
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