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And while Pfizer vaccines are already reaching Britain, Canada and the United States, it is unclear when they will reach other countries. Mexico, according to an announcement, could receive its first vaccines at any time in the next 12 months.
Clemens Auer, a chief negotiator for the European Union, said in an email that his contract with Pfizer for 200 million doses came with a “fixed delivery schedule” but that he was withholding the details from the public. “The details don’t matter much,” he said, given the large volume of promising vaccines the EU had sourced.
In Canada, the government has faced questions about its contract with Moderna. The country reached an agreement in August for 20 million doses, with an option for an additional 36 million. The United States announced a deal for up to 500 million doses soon after, and Britain and the European Union announced their own deals last month.
The road to a coronavirus vaccine ›
Answers to your questions about vaccines
With the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine starting in the US, here are answers to some questions you might be wondering about:
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- If I live in the US, when can I get the vaccine? While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help you.
- When will I be able to return to normal life after receiving the vaccine? Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gets sufficient protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they will only be able to vaccinate a small percentage of their citizens at most in the first two months. The unvaccinated majority will remain vulnerable to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show strong protection against the disease. But it is also possible for people to transmit the virus without even knowing they are infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists do not yet know whether vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for now, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, etc. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly as a society we achieve that goal, life could start to get closer to normal in the fall of 2021.
- If I have been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask? Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially be licensed this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that yielded these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still transmit the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That is still a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected with the coronavirus can transmit it as long as they do not experience a cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively as vaccines are rolled out. Meanwhile, even vaccinated people will have to think of themselves as potential spreaders.
- Will it hurt? What are the side effects? The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is given as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection will not be different from the ones you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none have reported serious health problems. But some of them have experienced short-term discomfort, including flu-like aches and symptoms that usually last for a day. People may need to plan to take a day off from work or school after the second injection. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign: They are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and generating a powerful response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
- Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide in. The cell uses the mRNA to make coronavirus proteins, which can stimulate the immune system. At any given time, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce to make their own proteins. Once those proteins are made, our cells shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that our cells produce can only survive for a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the cell’s enzymes a little longer, so that the cells can produce additional virus proteins and elicit a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last a few days at most before being destroyed.
So when Moderna recently said its first 20 million would go to the United States, Canadian politicians were accused of letting their country lose its place. It was not widely known that, as a condition of receiving financial support from the United States, Moderna had promised Americans their first doses.
Erin O’Toole, the conservative leader of the Canadian Parliament, introduced a motion that requires the government to publish the dates of fulfillment of their requests, saying that citizens “deserve to know when they can expect each type of vaccine.”
Doses can be promised, but production is not guaranteed.
Even if other promising candidates, like Johnson & Johnson, get approval early and take the pressure off Pfizer and Moderna, there is no guarantee that the companies will be able to meet their commitments next year.
“People think that just because we’ve shown in phase 3 clinical trials that we have safe and effective vaccines, the taps are about to open all the way,” said Dr. Richard Hatchett, director of the Coalition for Preparedness. Epidemics, one of the global non-profit organizations leading the Covax program with WHO “The challenges of scaling up manufacturing are significant and difficult.
