COVID-19 FIRST VACCINE
As coronavirus cases surge in the United States and around the world, with little relief in sight, the world got good news on Monday. Pfizer and its partner, the German company, BioNTech, announced Monday their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19 among those without evidence of prior infection.
What did these scientists find out?
• Half of the people got the vaccine, while the other half got a placebo of salt water. The companies then waited for people to get sick to determine if the vaccine offered any protection.
• The vaccine was given to 43,358 participants out of whichonly 94 participants got sick with Covid-19. That early analysis suggests the vaccine is over 90 percent effective.
Will a 90% effective vaccine be helpful?
• The Food and Drug Administration had set a bar of 50 percent effectiveness for vaccine makers who wanted to submit their vaccines. Therefore, a 90% effective vaccine can be extremely helpful.
• To get a sense of how good these results are, it’s worth looking at vaccines that people regularly receive. On the low end, influenza vaccines are 40 to 60 percent effective at best, because the influenza virus keeps evolving into new forms year after year. By contrast, two doses of the measles vaccine are 97 percent effective.
• So far Pfizer and BioNTech have not reported any serious safety concerns from their vaccine.
What is left to do in the trial of the vaccine?
• The trial will continue until it reaches 164 cases of Covid-19. At that point, the study will be complete and the results analyzed.
• The effectiveness of a vaccine can only be definitivelydetermined once millions of people get it. But experts say that the preliminary data indicates that the effectiveness should be very high.
Who will get the new vaccine first?
• Exactly who will qualify for the initial doses has not been decided, but groups that are at higher risk for infection, or are more vulnerable to the virus, are likely to get priority. That could include health care workers as well as older adults and those who have risk factors like obesity or diabetes.
When will the general public be able to get it?
• Pfizer has said that it will likely apply for emergency authorization from the FDA in the third week of November, after it collects the two months of safety data.
• The vaccine could be administered to certain high-risk populations before the end of the year, but that would only happen if everything goes as planned and there are no unforeseen delays.
Will the vaccine be effective for children and the elderly?
• The vaccine study results don’t tell us whether older people will get strong protection from the vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech’s clinical trial includes people over age 65, so it will eventually provide this crucial information in the coming months.
• The trial run by Pfizer and BioNTech initially was open to people 18 or older only, but in September they began including teenagers as young as 16.
• Last month, they launched a new trial on children as young as 12 and plan to work their way to younger ages.
Can people stop wearing masks now?
• No, everyone should continue wearing masks as coronavirus is still raging across the country.
• Even if a vaccine is authorized within months, it will initially only be available to a sliver of the American public.
• Most health officials think an effective vaccine won’t be available to anyone who wants it until well into 2021. Even then, there is still no data about whether a vaccine will stop asymptomatic spread of the virus, or the extent to which it will prevent people from developing severe Covid-19.
• Most experts say even when a vaccine is widely available, additional measures like masks will still be necessary until the public health threat has subsided.