Covid Vaccine

Article Written by Ananya Nayar, Website edited By Misaki Tomiyama

Published on 14 November '20

German company BioNTech and American pharmaceutical company Pfizer have reached a breakthrough and developed a potential CoronaVirus-19 vaccine. It has been the biggest scientific advance against Covid so far and the vaccine has treated cases in adults and children.

Image Credits to Wix

The vaccine has been more than 90% effective in those who have not had a prior infection (respiratory disease).

Pfizer has said that "based on current projections we expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021."

How the mRNA vaccine works

Germany announced that the vaccine may not be ready until March-April 2021, however there are 7 other vaccines to be tested soon which will be given to the priority groups who are at risk from Covid. These 7 vaccines to be tested come from Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, CureVa, Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Novovax.

The German government stated that they will cover the value of the vaccines, while the price of setting up vaccination centres will be supported by the state’s public and private health insurers.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) have approved this vaccine and estimated 70% or more of the population will have to be immunized to stop circulation of the virus.

Doctors are optimistic on the results of the vaccine, however, once the vaccine is developed it is unlikely that the production will start immediately and will be available in mass quantity for a few months and medical workers must be aware about this idea.

Currently, there are more than 200 vaccine candidates attempting to produce a perfect vaccine, there are many in trial but most have not been able to check off all the measures required, this vaccine by BioNTech and Pfizer seems to be on track for public consumption.