Moderna Inc, Pfizer, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Sputnik V, there are too many COVID-19 vaccines, but how will we know which one is the right one? Are they effective enough? Will these vaccines cater to all people, will it be enough? When will we get back to our normal life? The coronavirus cases worldwide and in India continues to rage on, people are just eying their hope on the COVID-19 vaccine so that they can get back to their ‘normal’ life.
Currently, there are 321 vaccine projects ongoing around the world. Out of which, 40 are tested on humans and more than dozen are in their phase three efficacy trials. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, microbiologist, and professor at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, in an interview with Indian Express, said, “All of the vaccines that have been evaluated are safe and immunogenic. But safe and immunogenic does not necessarily mean effective in preventing disease and that’s the outcome that we will get from the Phase three trials. Given that we have a dozen-plus candidates that are in phase three. I think it’s very likely that we will have several successful candidates. The question will be, when will we know this and how effective will they be.”
Dr. Kang also shed light on what level of efficacy would we need in a vaccine to eliminate the need for social distancing and masks? She said that we need a perfect vaccine and we need to vaccinate everybody in the world. She also said that there is no vaccine in the world which is 100 percent efficacious. “Some of the best vaccines we have, like measles, are 90 percent plus. The malaria vaccine has only about 30 percent efficacy. So while we would all like a perfect vaccine, sometimes we have to work with vaccines that are less than perfect. And the 50 percent efficacy is actually not too bad for a respiratory virus,” she told the publication.
Dr. Kang said that we will need to practice social distancing and wear masks even if we have vaccines. She said that until we have something that can act as a readout to know whether a person is protected or not. “This is called a correlate of protection. It may be an antibody level. We won’t know for sure among all the people who have received vaccine, which ones are protected and which ones are not. So life is not going to go back to normal the minute we have a vaccine.”