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The search for an effective vaccine against Covid-19 has taken a significant step forward, with the publication of “milestone” results.
What has Pfizer / BioNTech achieved?
They were the first to share data from the final phases of testing, known as staging 3 trials.
This is a critical point in the vaccine development process, where some of the experimental vaccines will fail.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines use a completely experimental method, which involves injecting part of the genetic code of the virus into the body to train the immune system.
About 43,000 people have been vaccinated and there are still no safety concerns.
So when will there be a vaccine?
Pfizer believes that it will be able to deliver 50 million doses by the end of this year and about 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
The UK will receive 10 million doses by the end of 2020, and another 30 million have already been ordered.
Exactly who gets the vaccine first depends on where Covid spread when the vaccine was available and which group of people was most effective.
For example, the UK has not yet decided to prioritize health and care workers who work with the most vulnerable or those most at risk if they fall ill.
Age is by far the biggest risk factor for Covid, so the older you get, the sooner you have a chance to get vaccinated.
Most experts believe that the vaccine will not be widely available until mid-2021.
What other vaccines are being developed?
More results are expected from research groups to test advanced vaccines in the coming weeks and months.
Ten more vaccines are in the final stages of testing.
The main candidates are vaccines of:
- University of Oxford and AstraZeneca of the United Kingdom
- CanSino with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology of China
- Gamaleya Research Institute of Russia
- Beijing Institute of Biological Products and Sinopharm in China
- Sinovac Institute and Butantan in Brazil
- The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and Sinopharm in China
It is worth noting that there are 4 coronaviruses circulating in humans. They cause the symptoms of the common cold and we do not have a vaccine for these viruses.
Are there different types of vaccines?
The purpose of a vaccine is to inject the virus into the immune system in a harmless way so that the immune system recognizes it as an invader and learns how to fight it.
However, there are many ways to do this and researchers are using different approaches.
Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines inject genetic fragments of the corona virus into the body. Once inside the body, this process begins to produce viral proteins to train the body. This is a completely new technique.
The Oxford and Russian vaccines took a harmless virus that infects chimpanzees and genetically modified it to resemble the corona virus, in hopes of receiving an answer.
Two of the main vaccines made in China use the original virus, but in its inactivated form, they cannot cause infection.
Understanding which method produces the best results will be very important. Trials, in which people are intentionally infected, can help answer these questions.
What remains to be done?
• Large-scale vaccine production must be developed for the billions of doses that may be required.
• Regulators must approve vaccines before they can be administered.
• Ultimately, there will be the great logistical challenge of actually vaccinating the majority of the world’s population.
How many people should be vaccinated?
It is difficult to know without knowing the effectiveness of the vaccine.
It is believed that 60-70% of the world’s population needs to be immune to the virus to prevent it from spreading easily (known as herd immunity); in other words, billions of people must be immunized, even when the vaccine is working perfectly.
Why do we need vaccines?
If you want life to get back to normal, we need vaccines.
Even now, the vast majority of people are still susceptible to corona virus infection. Thanks to the social exclusion regulations, we are avoiding the death toll. But these regulations limit people’s lives.
But vaccines teach our bodies how to fight infection safely. This can prevent us from getting infected with the corona virus in the first place or at least make Covid less fatal.
Vaccines, along with better treatments, are the “strategy” out of a pandemic.
Will vaccines protect everyone?
Not all people respond to vaccination in the same way.
The researchers will closely monitor the results in the elderly, as they are at the highest risk of infection.
But history also shows that any vaccine may be less successful in the elderly because their immune systems do not respond well to vaccination. We see this every year with the flu.
This can be overcome by multiple vaccination or a vaccine with a chemical (called an adjuvant) that strengthens the immune system.
