Can We Stretch Existing Covid Vaccines to Inoculate More People? Experts Are Divided

July 9, 2021

(STAT News) – With the global supply of Covid-19 vaccine still woefully inadequate, vaccine makers are scouring the pharmaceutical landscape for partners to ramp up manufacturing, and civil society groups are pressing politicians to waive intellectual property protections in a bid to spur still more production. But what if there was a simpler way? What if current supplies could be stretched, to vaccinate more people more quickly? What if the world is using more vaccine than it needs to on each person immunized, depriving people in the queue of a chance to be protected? Reducing the size of a vaccine dose is an approach that has been used successfully before and ought to be explored, some scientists argue. (Read Full Article)