Bulgarian Expert: There should be Vaccination against COVID-19 Every Year

"I do not believe that Omicron will end the pandemic. New variants of the virus are constantly appearing. The mutation of the virus is a normal biological process. For every virus - not just this one. There will be many other mutations. The question is not whether the pandemic with Omicron will disappear, but what measures will be taken. At the moment, one of these measures is immunization." This was stated on Nova TV by acad. Bogdan Petrunov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

He was adamant that the booster dose stimulated antibody production. "I can't imagine, however, that we will constantly take a booster dose. We need to have an immunization policy similar to the flu. As every year the WHO determines what the circulating variants are - so there should be a vaccine against COVID-19, which should be given once a year, according to current variants. The data we have so far show that immunity after a vaccine lasts between 8 and 10 months."

According to him, the more vaccinated people there are, the fewer mutations there will be. "There has to be at least 80 percent immunized population globally to be able to say that we have done it. Vaccines are constantly being developed to counteract the currently circulating variants. But even current vaccines protect enough against the severe course of the virus. There is no doubt that current vaccines also protect against Omicron," he said.

"Excessive use of antibiotics carries a huge risk. We try to convince not only people but also doctors that uncontrolled prescribing of antibiotics is dangerous. We will reach a point where there will be such resistance to bacteria that there will be no antibiotic to treat them," said the academician.

/Nova