Dear world. We have a vaccine! – VG

At the end of dark 2020, there is finally good news. And it is much better than we dared hope.

Tens of thousands of people around the world have been injected with a vaccine or a placebo in recent months. No one knows what they have received.

But now someone knows. Because one of the many vaccines involved in the race really works against the coronavirus.

Who will get the vaccine first? Watch VG Explains in the video window below.

The light at the end of the tunnel comes from Pfizer and BioNTech. And it is very good that Pfizer has a special agreement with the EU that will also ensure fast delivery to Norway.

Its vaccine is 90 percent effective, the company reports.

The figures behind this are roughly as follows: There are 43,538 volunteers in the experiment. The company claims they have had 94 cases of corona infection among the subjects.

Of these, about nine must have become ill with coviditis in the group that received the actual vaccine. And they have 85 patients in the placebo group.

And it doesn’t seem like much. But that’s what it takes in the first round.

This means that vaccinated people are not guaranteed against the disease. And we already knew that none of the first generation vaccines would provide full protection against corona. In other words, people who have been vaccinated can become infected. But few have symptoms.

And as high efficiency as we see in this experiment, it is much better than the minimum requirement.

The requirement of, for example, the US authorities has been that a vaccine be 50 percent effective, that is, that it produces less disease in more than half of those vaccinated.

Therefore, the vaccine would have been approved with many more patients in the vaccine group.

Pfizer’s vaccine is based on a new technology, called mRNA, in which the genetic material of the virus is artificially created in the laboratory and added to the vaccine.

It is also very good. Because this is the first time that a type of vaccine of this type has been used in humans. And that means that it will be much easier to make vaccines in general.

While a regular vaccine is said to take eight to 12 years to develop, the new corona vaccine is here, after a few months.

Vaccine trials are conducted in countries around the world among ordinary people who have volunteered. And in such experiments one only has to wait until the subjects become naturally infected. Many experts consider it unethical to deliberately infect people with such a dangerous virus.

The second wave of the corona picked up speed, causing many to become infected. Because it is only when you have had enough cases, you can check if it is accidental or if the vaccine works.

An infected person is defined as a test person who has a positive coronary test and with several symptoms listed previously.

These are so-called blind studies in which even those who administer the study do not know who received the vaccine. In several of the studies, the placebo group has even been given another harmless vaccine, so they have mild symptoms and cannot detect the placebo.

We now know that it is possible to make an effective vaccine. However, this vaccine is not yet approved. A very important part remains, namely, checking how safe it is. And it is done with the same subjects with the same type of procedures.

And this takes longer, because some of the side effects of vaccines in general can be quite rare. Pfizer will continue testing for two years, but says they are still waiting for answers on safety in the third week of November.

What will the Christmas celebration be like in 2020? We asked Espen Nakstad at the Norwegian Health Directorate: watch the video!

Bent Høie says we will persevere until Christmas. And it’s true. But for the vaccine, it will probably take a little longer. Pfizer says they will deliver 50 million doses this year. Espen Nakstad has previously said that many will likely be vaccinated in April.

Getting enough production is a challenge. Transporting vaccines, getting enough syringes and staff, is also a big task.

During the swine flu in Norway in 2009, we saw that it took more than a month to vaccinate a village. With the health staff and equipment we have now, it will take time.

Pessimists may mention several reefs in the sea. We do not know if this vaccine provides protection against transmission. People may be contagious even if they have no symptoms. This, in turn, can spell trouble for herd immunity.

It is also open how long the vaccine will take effect. It has been too short a time for us to know. Another big question is whether it affects the people who really need it, the people at risk. Perhaps we still have too few cases to be able to say something about it. And yet we don’t know anything about the side effects.

We probably need a whole arsenal of measures and medicines, as well as the constant development of vaccines, in the fight against COVID-19.

In any case, it is very good news that we have invented a completely new vaccine at record speed that works well. We are many steps closer to a solution, and there are many things that can be fixed with adjustments.

So clearly there are more reasons to rejoice. For now, the score is 1-0 in the World Cup match against SARS-CoV-2.