Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibodies

Re:Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibo... by MereInterest on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:02PM (#26137510)

Interesting, I hadn't known that. I imagine the short booster dose time also helps in implementation, because an individual gets maximum immunity 6 weeks after the first dose (4 weeks pause + 2 weeks) rather than 28 weeks (6 month pause + 2 weeks) for a longer pause. Having a longer pause to maximize individual immunity might not be the fastest way to maximize population immunity during an ongoing pandemic.

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Re:Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibo... by mlyle on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:47PM (#26137779)

First dose gets you to 80% efficacy after about 10 days.

If you e.g. produce 1 dose per month, you're way better off giving the doses to ABCDEFABCDEF than AABBCCDDEEFF. Six people are 80% protected after 6 months, instead of 3 people 95% protected after 6 months... assuming that everyone ends up at the same efficacy at the end (which we don't know).

But... we know this is probably effective-- probably even more effective after the delayed second dose.. which isn't the same as showing that it's effective in a study.

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Re:Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibo... by MereInterest on Sunday February 14, 2021 @09:33PM (#26138428)

Good point, I hadn't been aware that the first dose was that effective without the booster.

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Re:Half Doses of Moderna Vaccine Produce Neutralizing Antibo... by nicoburns on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:28PM (#26137654)

I'm not sure about that. Here in the UK we've gone with a 12 week gap precisely because it allows us to vaccinate more of the population more quickly.

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