COVID vaccine over 90% affective, FDA expected to approve

Posted November 2020

By Isabelle Donahue

Staff Editor

After eight months of this pandemic, the first COVID-vaccines are being tested with high effectiveness and success rates but many speculate on who be the first to receive the vaccine.

The biotech companies Pfizer and Moderna have made the two most effective vaccines in the U.S., Pfizer at over 90%, and Moderna at 94.5%. Pfizer, who is expected to receive Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization on their vaccine before mid-December, says it expects to supply enough vaccine doses for around 12.5 million Americans, 3.7% of the U.S. population, by the end of 2020. Moderna’s vaccine, which is similar to Pfizer’s, may receive FDA authorization in the next couple of months. Moderna expects to be able to ship 20 million vaccine doses by the end of 2020. Regardless, it will be at least several months before everyone in the U.S. will be able to receive the vaccine. Some medical professionals say it could take multiple years for the vaccine to be accessible worldwide.

"We should not let the accomplishment of an effective vaccine have us feel we can let our guard down," Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Only the "synergy between a vaccine and public health measures will get us out of this very difficult situation."

While the two vaccines have very similar efficacy and safety characterizations, Moderna’s vaccine seems to have multiple practical advantages to Pfizer’s. Pfizer’s vaccine has to be kept at minus 75 degrees Celsius, no other vaccine used in the U.S. needs to be kept that cold, meaning that most doctors’ offices and pharmacies’ freezers don’t drop to that temperature. Moderna’s vaccine could be kept at minus 20 degrees Celsius, the same temperature as the chickenpox vaccine. Moderna’s vaccine can also be held up to 30 days in a refrigerator while Pfizer’s can only last five days while refrigerated.

"These are temperatures commonly found in readily available pharmaceutical freezers and refrigerators which would enable simpler distribution in the United States and other parts of the world," a Moderna representative said.

Even with the easier transportation and storing abilities some are still uneasy about the new vaccines, mainly due to the speed at which they’re being manufactured. Previously, when vaccines were manufactured too quickly there were cases in which patients got worse or became more susceptible to the illness. Sharon Nachman, M.D., Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, recently said that the developing vaccines haven’t been as rushed as some people may believe.

“The technology for this vaccine, while new, is still years old,” Nachman stated. “Understanding this technology is key to understanding why it’s so safe.”

Nachman’s referring to the fact that the technology and research used to develop vaccines have been around for decades, those working on developing COVID-19 vaccines started with a large amount of data and information to work with. Nachman also explained that the newly developed vaccines have been tested in animal trials before being exposed to any human test participants. The technology behind both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines relies on messenger RNA, meaning that the vaccines were developed to encourage the body to create a small amount of the protein that COVID-19 uses to attach to cells and cause an infection. When the body makes this protein it will be recognized as unneeded and the body will remove it from the system. The body will continue removing the protein as time passes, the body now has some defense against COVID-19.

“I would say it was intensified and that after each phase of the study it was analyzed in a quicker fashion than normally may be so,” M.D., pediatric intensivist of Pediatric Critical Care of South Florida Allan Greissman explained. “This does not mean it was rushed, it was just worked on more aggressively versus it being put to the bottom of the list. The research on these vaccines is meticulous, and given the significance of the disease, it was made a priority.”

The expected arrival dates of COVID-19 vaccines vary. Pfizer is expected to be the first vaccine released to the public, the likelihood is that doses will begin to be being administered before 2021. Moderna is the second closest to being released, it should have it’s FDA authorization by mid-December. Vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are both still completing the final trial stages. Novavax’s vaccine will begin its final trial before the beginning of December. Even with the upcoming distribution of the vaccines the population of the U.S. and limited supplies causes many to believe that widespread distribution won’t come until the end of 2021.

Due to the limited amount of vaccine doses available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified four priority groups to receive the vaccine first: health care workers, essential workers, people with underlying medical conditions, and senior citizens. Vaccinating the roughly 20 million U.S. doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and other health care providers will help protect the country’s COVID-19 responders and their patients. Approximately 87 million U.S. workers are classified as essential workers, most of those workers have jobs involving interacting with others. So, having this group protected from COVID-19 would be a large step in reducing critical service interruptions along with decreasing the spread of COVID-19. 100 million or so U.S. citizens have conditions that place them at a higher risk of illness or death from COVID-19, this will especially focus on people with lung affecting diseases or long-lasting immune system compromising illnesses. The CDC also recommends that approximately 53 million U.S. adults over 65 should also be the first to receive the vaccine due to advanced age increasing the fatality of COVID-19. The people not in these four categories will most likely have to wait until April, May, or June 2021 to receive a dose.

“For the foreseeable future, we will need to continue our mitigation measures, including wearing masks,” says Dr. David Ho, a virologist working on developing monoclonal antibody therapies for Covid-19 at Columbia University, noting that precautionary measures will likely last “for much of 2021.”

Regardless of when the vaccine will be distributed, anyone can still receive a COVID-19 test. David Douglas School District has partnered with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) for a research study that OHSU is conducting which will give testing opportunities that will help the district identify COVID-19 infections in communities with increasing infection rates. OHSU’s research study is looking at new methods to test for COVID-19 using saliva and sewage in neighborhoods. The purpose of this study is to find if testing sewage can detect COVID-19 when screening multiple people and to compare how well sewage testing works compared to weekly saliva testing. This study will not look at individual results but focus on the combined results of a community of up to 10,000 people. DDSD families can still receive a test regardless of if they participate in the study. The testing will happen on Thursdays 3-6 p.m. at Imago Dei Eastside Church or on Mondays 3-6 p.m. at Prescott Elementary. Families don’t need to sign-up to receive a test but those who wish to participate in the study have to make an appointment for the testing at either Prescott Elementary or Imago Dei Eastside Church.