Moderna vaccine can be accommodated within existing distribution networks: Official (Representational)
One of the biggest challenges in delivering a promising coronavirus vaccine based on unprecedented technology to millions of people around the world has just gotten easier.
When Pfizer Inc. announced effective preliminary results for its vaccine candidate last week, the downside was that it must be stored at ultra-cold temperatures, which poses significant logistical problems. But Moderna Inc. surpassed its rival on Monday by offering a vaccine based on the same technology that appears to be equally effective, but can also be stored at regular refrigerated temperatures for up to a month.
The difference is significant. Delivering regular vaccines to populations in the most remote regions, from India to Africa, is quite difficult just because of supply and transportation issues. The temperature factor introduces a more overwhelming hurdle, requiring countries to build storage and transportation networks that can maintain temperatures much colder than those required for frozen meat. The massive investment and coordination required increased the likelihood that only rich nations would be guaranteed access.
“The Moderna vaccine is a much more viable option for low- and middle-income countries than the Pfizer vaccine,” said Rachel Silverman, a Washington-based policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. “The cold storage needs are less extreme.”
Moderna’s vaccine can not only be stable in the refrigerator for 30 days, it can also be kept in regular freezers for long-term use. Pfizer’s vaccine must be kept at negative 70 degrees and can only be refrigerated for up to five days, at least until its researchers can match Moderna’s breakthrough.
“The Moderna vaccine can be accommodated within existing vaccine distribution networks,” said Ayfer Ali, assistant professor and drug research specialist at Warwick Business School in the UK. “Even in remote and underdeveloped areas, refrigerators are available or can be supplied inexpensively.”
Although Moderna has only closed deals with a handful of developed countries for its vaccine, it received funding from the nonprofit Coalition for Innovations in Epidemic Preparedness and therefore may be intended to help enable access in countries lower-middle-income, Silverman said.
The Boston-based biotech company’s vaccine uses the same new and experimental messenger RNA mechanism as Pfizer’s. The emergence of two promising candidates is helping ease concerns that a single vaccine will not be enough to meet global demand.
“We will need to use all the capacity we have and all the vaccines that are effective as they go online,” Ali said.
Pfizer could also make its vaccine more viable by reformulating it, possibly to a lyophilized form, to avoid the problem of refrigeration, said Gillies O’Bryan-Tear, chair of policy and communications at the UK School of Pharmaceutical Medicine.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Covid-19 vaccines are in the works, and another, more profitable candidate may emerge that uses proven technology and is easier to manufacture and ship, experts said.
“I think it will become clear in the coming months, there are other vaccines that are in the works and that are in Phase III,” said Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. “There will be decisions about the costs of waiting versus acting. Some might decide to wait based on broader characteristics and the need for an ultra-cold chain, I think that will be a big calculation.”
Other vaccine options may be essential, as not many existing drug manufacturers have production facilities for messenger RNA technology.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India Ltd., the world’s largest vaccine producer by volume, said he had no plans to “foray with any messenger RNA candidates” for at least 2.5 years when a new facility of the company The building has been completed.
“This kind of innovation is great in the long run,” Poonawalla said in an interview. But it remains a question how many of them will be “usable” in a practical sense, he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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