University of Santo Tomas (UST) Rev. Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., head of the UST-Covax Vaccine Awareness Team, addressed the press in a briefing hosted by Malacañang today, where he advocated prioritizing the NCR+8 areas in order to contain the pandemic and spoke about an oral vaccine being developed by his team.
Austriaco, who is a molecular biologist, said that he developed the oral vaccine delivery system with his students in the United States. The vaccine delivery system is now undergoing animal studies at UST, which will last for several months before they could proceed to human trials.
The goal of the oral vaccine delivery system is to benefit people living in poverty, as this system is meant to be inexpensive. Given the timelines for trials, this would likely be a second-generation Covid-19 vaccine, and would be available sometime in 2022 at the earliest.
Austriaco also said that ‘containment’ of the virus is possible by Christmas, as containment requires 40 to 50% of the population to be fully vaccinated, as compared to the 70 to 80% required for herd immunity. Containment, he clarified, would protect against future surges, allow the reopening of the economy, and would mean that the vaccinated public would be allowed to gather without masks on.
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Outbreaks would still be possible under a containment scenario, but “the virus will struggle to spread through the population.” Herd immunity, on the other hand, is a bigger goal that would effectively starve the virus; and Austriaco emphasized that it should be attained “at every level”.
However, with the severe global shortage in vaccines, Austriaco advocates vaccinating the NCR+8 areas first. The reason, he says, is that surges tend to begin in these places, and spread to the rest of the country. “When we build herd immunity in the NCR+8, we will protect the rest of the country,” Austriaco said.
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