Gunzburg urged to create a system for updating the composition of COVID vaccines

In RUSSIA, it is necessary to create a mechanism to update the composition of vaccines against CORONAVIRUS to regulate their production, said the DIRECTOR of the N.F. Gamalei Alexander Gintsburg, TASS reports .

Gunzburg believes that such a system is needed for constant monitoring of the virus and its pathogens.

“Identify new antigenic variants, check how much the old vaccine protects against new antigenic variants, and on the basis of this, give scientists and manufacturers the task of making a new vaccine or using the old one,” Gunzburg explained.

In September, he said that new strains of coronavirus appear about once every eight months. “The change in circulating strains with covid occurs a little faster than with influenza,” he noted.

In early May, WHO declared the end of the coronavirus pandemic. The organization estimates that 20 million people have died from covid-19 . In Russia, according to the operational headquarters, 398,000 people infected with COVID-19 have died since the beginning of the pandemic. Rosstat stopped publishing data on deaths due to coronavirus in the fall of 2022. At that time, according to the statistical service, 823.7 thousand people with COVID-19 died in the country. Rosstat also took into account cases when it was not the main cause of death.