we need vaccines not developed against one specific strain like the vaccines we currently have developed against the wuhan strain, what we call the strain and then lose efficacy on future strains. we need to have more pancoronavirus vaccine that it doesn t matter which variant but still have efficacy and that really is where the holy grail of vaccinology is looking at. what s a measure or indicator you ll see that will make you comfortable that thinking that the pandemic has become endemic and is essentially that this virus, what we re tfacing is manageable? i think there are going to be two things. one, we see a decrease in the number of hospitalizations and number two, we see a decrease in the number of deaths. we are still having over 2,000 deaths for day in our country and that s clearly unacceptable level. i think most of us would like to see the number of deaths drop about 100 deaths per day and in
shabir madhi is a professor of vaccinology in south africa from vits university inj0hannesburg where the 0micron variant was first detected and she said that while the number of cases in the country were continuing to rise rapidly as far as he could determine they weren t seeing a correlation with a rise in mortality rates. so the epicentre of this outbreak was in a province known as gauteng, which is the most densely populated province in south africa and i think it is bestjust to sort of reflect on what is happening in this province. currently, we have been identifying in the region of 9000 10,000 new cases per day but that seems to have plateaued in the last few days and 95% of those cases are 0micron. to put that into context, south africa is about 13 times less number of tests per capita compared with what happens in the uk. so the 10,000 we have been reporting is the tip of the iceberg in that scenario, relative to what you would have
very exciting. that s a different committee that meets. that s not the vaccine committee, and obviously a very important story, a very busy month of october, and i think americans can be happy and welcome the news that fda is on it, and all of these interventions may be poised to benefit us. but we doen t want to pre-judge the data. safety comes first. safety and efficacy are the two tasks we take first. of course there are steps between the submission of the data for pfizer for children under 12 for vaccines, and getting that eua. but i wonder when you look at the polling of parents who say the majority of them, that they re not going to immediately get their young children vaccinated, you re a pediatrician, also focused on vaccinology, what is the work that has to be done? how do you inform or get those parents to want to get their children vaccinated? thank you for that, victor, and that s really a critical
say that there s a need for booster shots yet. do you so you agree with paul offit? it s always safe to agree with dr. offit, given his experience in vaccinology. yes, i do. in the advisory group meeting that happened the other day, the emphasis was on the fact that the current two-dose regimen has done a really good job in preventing the worst outcomes of covid, right? it s really protected people from getting admitted to the hospital, from dying, and generally from severe illness. it hasn t necessarily been as good against people getting infected with the delta variant. so the question is if you do want to institute boosters, should that be with the same vaccine? should the timing be oriented towards more surveillance of emerging molecular variants and that s a really good question as well. so i think there are just a lot of unknowns out there as we move