Delta variant, Abrignani: “Ugly beast but there are vaccines”

“The Indian variant is an ugly beast, but it doesn’t worry us that much because we have the vaccines. If we didn’t have the vaccines, with the Indian variant we would be in really bad shape, with the infectiousness and lethality it has.” Instead “it is a variant that we will check”. The immunologist of the State University of Milan Sergio Abrignani expresses optimism about the Delta variant emergency, which is alarming England and beyond. The member of the Technical Scientific Committee for the Covid emergency, who spoke at ‘Agorà’ on Rai3, reassures about the efficacy of vaccines also against the mutant reported for the first time in India. “What we know from the United Kingdom – he remembers – is that after two doses of the vaccine you are protected 80% with Pfizer and 70% with AstraZeneca” also against the Delta variant of Sars-CoV-2, “therefore an excellent level of protection, even if there is always 20% of people who are not protected with the best vaccine “. But it is a variant that we will keep at bay, the expert is convinced, “because if you are vaccinated, unless you have many underlying diseases, it should be well controlled”. Regions in anti-Covid vaccinations, Abrignani says: “The regionalization of health care is fine” in ordinary conditions, in ‘peacetime’. “But in an emergency”, during a pandemic, “in my opinion you always need a head that decides”. To those who ask him if the Regions have exaggerated, for example with the vaccination Open Days in young people, the expert replies “I don’t know if they have exaggerated. What I know is that in Italy health has a regional organization. some it is an advantage and for others a defect. For me it must be contextualized: in a moment of pandemic, with 126 thousand deaths, with a blocked country, in my view, a single decision-maker would be needed “. “We are not discussing 50 cases of meningitis in Tuscany or a thousand cases of some other disease in Sicily”, specifies the CTS immunologist. “We are discussing a country on its knees”. Will we reach the herd immunity target in September? “We will reach 45-50 million Italians vaccinated and it will be very important. It is thanks to vaccines that we are getting out of this nightmare”, underlines the member of the CTS.