[ad_1]
The Astra-Zeneca vaccine showed a 62 percent protective effect with the regular dosing schedule.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt After the Biontech and Moderna company from Mainz, the British pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca has received approval for a Covid vaccine for the first time. The vaccine, developed in cooperation with the University of Oxford, can be used in Britain from Wednesday.
The approval is an important signal for the fight against the corona pandemic in two ways. On the one hand, it shows that regulatory authorities are willing to accept vaccines that do not come close to the threshold of effectiveness above 90 percent presented by Biontech and Moderna.
On the other hand, it speaks to the fact that the vaccine supply will improve very rapidly in the next four to eight weeks, and that sooner or later the competition between Covid vaccine developers will intensify.
The Astra-Zeneca vaccine only showed a 62 percent protective effect with the regular dosing schedule. But even this value is still well above the minimum 50 percent effectiveness required by regulators, and also well above the values achieved by flu vaccines.
In the current situation, with high infection rates around the world, such a vaccine can also contribute significantly to reducing the pandemic, especially since it is comparatively easy to use and relatively cheap.
In this context, the British vaccine can be expected to receive more approvals relatively quickly, even in the EU, regardless of its somewhat ambiguous test results. After all, an ongoing approval process is already running here. Therefore, a decision in favor of the product could be made relatively quickly as soon as the missing data has been submitted and approval has been formally requested.
The same goes for the vaccine from the American biotech company Moderna, which the medical committee of the European Medicines Agency EMA will discuss in the first week of January. The approval of the Moderna vaccine, which is already inoculated in the US, is also considered as good as it is true in the EU.
By the end of January, three approved Covid vaccines will likely already be available. Two more products, vaccine candidates from Johnson & Johnson and the US company Novavax, could follow in February and March, and at the beginning of the third quarter also the vaccine from Tübingen-based Curevac.
All of this suggests that herd immunity could possibly be achieved more quickly than expected by many. In Britain, politicians are now talking about the fact that the target could be reached by the end of the first quarter. For the EU, experts have so far hoped that this could be achieved in the course of the second quarter.
In any case, it becomes clear that in a few weeks the available quantities of vaccines will no longer be the crucial bottleneck, but logistics and personnel capacities at the vaccination centers.
Previous test results from Biontech, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca, but also study data published in the meantime by Chinese Sinopharm and the Russian Gamaley Institute, suggest that ultimately almost all vaccine candidates in advanced development they have a more or less protective effect against Covid diseases. could offer, even if only a few can match the very strong performance of the mRNA vaccines from Biontech and Moderna.
Production plans for more than 13 billion cans
The expected production volumes for these products are substantial. For the 13 vaccines that are currently being tested in phase 3 studies or have already received initial approvals, the announced capacities for 2021 total more than 13 billion doses.
Only the six major Western vaccine developers forecast a combined production of around 8.6 billion doses in 2021. The EU has contractually secured around 1.4 billion units and has options for additional orders. In addition, there are additional agreements between individual countries and vaccine companies, such as agreements between the federal government and Biontech and Curevac for 30 to 40 million units each. Even assuming that only a third of the quantities ordered will be delivered in the first half of the year, it is possible that more than 50 percent of the population in Germany and the EU are vaccinated.
A rapidly growing supply of Covid vaccines will present new challenges for committed manufacturers. By the end of the first trimester at the latest, the question should arise, for example, whether new emergency or conditional approvals are warranted in view of various available vaccines. This means that the laggards in vaccine research will have to go through the regular approval process and therefore lag further behind the leading companies.
Furthermore, for ethical reasons, sooner or later it will hardly be possible to conduct placebo-controlled studies. Instead, new vaccines must be tested against established vaccines. By then at the latest, the differences in efficacy and safety should be even more focused.
And finally, pharmaceutical companies will also have to grapple with the question of how many Covid vaccines will be needed in the long run. After all, according to the WHO, in addition to the 13 products in phase three worldwide, there are another 200 candidates in earlier phases of clinical development or in preclinical development. Many of them will be left on the road. Because not only herd immunity is possibly closer than expected, but also the risk of excess capacity.
Plus: The largest European mass vaccination of all time began on Sunday. Meanwhile, the population of Europe vacillates between skepticism and acceptance.
