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The news has raised great hopes: the Mainz company Biontech and the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer have taken a significant step towards an effective corona vaccine. Companies may want to apply for approval in the US starting next week. Is this the beginning of the gradual return to normalcy despite the Crown?
O-Ton Julia Köppe DER SPIEGEL “These first interim results are good news at the moment, but apart from the press release, there is little data. It is not clear, for example, in which age groups the infection could appear to be prevented It is important to know, however. Older people, in particular, are at higher risk of becoming seriously ill. Therefore, a possible vaccine should be effective for them. Furthermore, it is not clear how long immunity lasts and if they can develop side effects. So how good is the vaccine really? is, therefore, has yet to appear. “
Biontech examined the effectiveness of the vaccine with the name BNT162b2 in 43,500 volunteers, the results are encouraging: according to the manufacturer, the vaccine protects against Covid infection with an effectiveness of 90 percent, which would be a significantly higher value than the achieved with flu vaccines. becomes.
O-Ton Julia Köppe “The 90 percent effectiveness means that in the study nine out of ten test subjects who had received two doses of the vaccine were apparently protected from infection. This is a very good value at first, but not it is clear how long the possible immunity will last. And the vaccination of the patients was not long ago. Therefore, it is possible that the protection diminishes after a few months and the effectiveness could diminish accordingly. “
The duration of protection is one of the decisive factors for herd immunity, which would ultimately stop the pandemic.
O-Ton Julia Köppe: “The Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, had given a reference value of 60 percent of the population that would have to be vaccinated to achieve the so-called herd immunity. Only in Germany there would be almost 50 million people and Since each would need two doses, we would be at 100 million cans for Germany alone. Biontech and Pfizer currently assume that they will only be able to deliver 50 million cans this year, for the whole world. ”
But even if enough vaccine is available: for Germany alone, vaccinating tens of millions of people is a Herculean logistical task that could take months. After all, cans must not only be produced, but also stored, distributed, and managed. “
O-Ton Julia Köppe: “That’s why there are also plans for who should get a possible vaccine first. Even while things are, nothing fundamental will change in the next year. Then Pfizer and Biontech are currently expecting 1.3 billion in 2021. That sounds like to a lot, of course, but that would mean that only one in twelve people in the world could get vaccinated next year and, again, only as long as the vaccine actually reaches approval. ”
The approval process has already started, but it is not yet possible to predict exactly how long it will take. Looking at the United States in particular, experts believe initial approval is possible this year.
