With COVID its hard to find anything positive to report. However, recently there has been alot of positive news on the vaccine front. There are also alot of mis information regarding the vaccines. As someone with alot of knowledge on the topic and whose been tracking these things I thought Id summarize some of the highlights here. Why here? well Im not proud to admit the hobby scene is one of my "communities" lol Other circles im involved in this knowledge is already known...
For those that dont beleive in vaccines or think its some sort of major conspiracy with microchips/5g/billgates or whatever else is trending now a days, Im not here to convice you guys. No amount of fact or discussion is going to alter a mind that is set and fed by alternative facts. This is for the others.
The current number of Phase 3/Early Approved vaccines: 16
Total number in Phase 1: 27
Phase 2: 14
Phase 3 is where the vaccine has shown to be safe with some immune response. In phase 3 the efficacy or effectiveness of the vaccine against the disease is being tested. It takes time because the goal is to induce long term/permanent immunity which cannot be known unless we wait and see. Other problem is you essentially are waiting for your participants to get exposed to the virus and see if its protecting them and that is hard to control in an ethical way.
Below is a summary of some of TOP contenders:
BNT162b2 by Pfizer/BioNTECH/Fosun
mRNA-1273 by Moderna/NIH
AZD1222 by Aztrazeneca/University of Oxford
JNJ-78436735 by Johnson & Johnson
Sputnik V by Gamaleya Research Institute
There are more but these were the ones I wanted to highlight.
All projections currently are showing that we will have a few vaccines to choose from in the not so distant future. The logistics and polotics of them though will delay things even further.
For those that dont beleive in vaccines or think its some sort of major conspiracy with microchips/5g/billgates or whatever else is trending now a days, Im not here to convice you guys. No amount of fact or discussion is going to alter a mind that is set and fed by alternative facts. This is for the others.
The current number of Phase 3/Early Approved vaccines: 16
Total number in Phase 1: 27
Phase 2: 14
Phase 3 is where the vaccine has shown to be safe with some immune response. In phase 3 the efficacy or effectiveness of the vaccine against the disease is being tested. It takes time because the goal is to induce long term/permanent immunity which cannot be known unless we wait and see. Other problem is you essentially are waiting for your participants to get exposed to the virus and see if its protecting them and that is hard to control in an ethical way.
Below is a summary of some of TOP contenders:
BNT162b2 by Pfizer/BioNTECH/Fosun
- Collaboration between Pfizer, german company Biontech and Cinese company Fosun.
- It is a mRNA vaccine and it needs to be given in TWO doses
- Best published Evidence for its use: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.17.20176651v2
- Clinical Trial page: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728
- Already rewarded major billion dollar contracts in the USA, EU and Asia.
- Producing 1.3billion doses already
- MAJOR problem with this: LOGISTICS. It needs two doses and also needs to be stored in -90C temperatures. As you can imagine this poses a logistical nightmare. The company has developed big boxes that will hold the vaccine at those temperatures but those boxes are expensive and only come in big portions. Small, rural and poor areas are going to have a problem
- Personally, If I had to gamble on which one is going to be the most EFFECTIVE I would pick this. There are some reports that they are expecting long term efficacy results in November...
mRNA-1273 by Moderna/NIH
- This alongside the pfizer vaccine are widely regarded as the top contenders
- another mRNA vaccine so it needs to be given in two doses.
- Published evidence mRNA-1273 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2022483
- Clinical Trial page: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04283461
- 30,000 people already in testing
- 20 million doses already created but just got alot of funding to get more
- Canada is invested in this one
- The advantage of this vs the pfizer one is that it needs to be stored in -4C vs -90. But it is further behind in progress
AZD1222 by Aztrazeneca/University of Oxford
- This has been the spearhead vector vaccine. This means that the vaccine is an engineered virus designed to carry key parts of the covid one to induce a response
- Clinical Trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04516746
- Publication for safety: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31604-4/fulltext
- Needs two doses
- One of its trials halted as a patient developed transverse myelitis but trial still active in Brazil
- 400 million doses in production
JNJ-78436735 by Johnson & Johnson
- This is the new kid on the block and results release last week show AMAZING promise
- Another vector virus
- Clinical Trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722
- Trial summary and rationale https://www.jnj.com/coronavirus/covid-19-phase-3-study-clinical-protocol
- Early results show strong immune response
- If this one works its the winner since it can be stored normally and if the strong immune responses hold up will likely be a single dose one
Sputnik V by Gamaleya Research Institute
- This is the Russian study
- They have rushed this to approval so techinically its the furthest along by all the others ones
- Also another vector one
- Currently being tested in 40,000 people
- Evidence for its use: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31866-3/fulltext
- This is also very promising vaccine but personally im always skeptikal of russians
There are more but these were the ones I wanted to highlight.
All projections currently are showing that we will have a few vaccines to choose from in the not so distant future. The logistics and polotics of them though will delay things even further.
