'Don't Wait For 2nd Generation Covid Vaccines'

The president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Hong Kong, William Chui, on Monday urged people to get vaccinated as soon as possible rather than waiting for second-generation vaccines.

Chui said he expects new batches of Covid vaccines to be available only in the first quarter of next year, as it will take a long time for manufacturers to gather clinical evidence.

On a radio programme, he said there's no evidence yet to show that new generations of Covid vaccines will be more effective than the current ones against the BA.4 or BA.5 sub-variants.

"The early clinical studies have shown that the first generation and the second generation [vaccines], in terms of the efficacy or the level of neutralising antibody, they are very similar. They are comparable. The second generation of the BioNTech vaccine, especially with the Omicron strain BA.1, they show that the level of neutralising antibody are very similar. In other words, the second generation vaccine is not so superior than the first one," he said.

"For the components BA.4 and BA.5, we don't have any information yet because they just started the clinical trial at the moment."

Chui added that parents shouldn't wait for the 'baby version' of the BioNTech jab, noting that some children have become seriously ill recently after catching Covid.

He advised parents to first get their children jabbed with the current Sinovac vaccine.

"As the adult practice, we can use 'mix and match' so we can achieve a higher level of neutralising antibody. So don't wait until the baby version is available, take the inactivated vaccine first to protect the children."